[Python-Dev] Second post: PEP 557, Data Classes (original) (raw)

Eric V. Smith eric at trueblade.com
Sun Nov 26 10:14:24 EST 2017

On 11/26/2017 3:48 AM, Eric V. Smith wrote:

While creating an issue for this (https://github.com/ericvsmith/dataclasses/issues/88), it occurs to me that the class-level parameter really should be "order" or "orderable", not "compare". It made more sense when it was called "cmp", but "compare" now seems wrong.

Because "eq" says "can I compare two instances", and what's currently called "compare" is "can I order two instances". Nick had a similar suggestion before the PEP was written (https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/2017-May/045740.html). The field-level parameter should stay "compare", because it's used for both gt and friends, as well as eq and ne. It's saying "is this field used in all of the comparison methods".

I created https://github.com/ericvsmith/dataclasses/issues/90 for this. I think I'll leave 'eq' alone, and change 'compare' to 'order', for the class-level parameter name.

Eric.

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