[Python-ideas] Assignment decorators (Re: The Descriptor Protocol...)

Thu Mar 3 23:54:26 CET 2011

Andrew Svetlov wrote:
> Is there any idea how to extend decorator notation up to accepting
> right-hand argument?

Well, I just showed one. It's a little different from the
way function and class decorators work, but it has to be --
otherwise it wouldn't provide any advantage over just
writing a function call and assignment.
I've also had another idea on how to approach the problem
without involving the decorator concept:
 def name as something(arg, ...)
would be equivalent to
 name = something('name', arg, ...)
The idea here is that we're generalising the way that
'def' defines an object that knows the name it was defined
with.
It's notable that namedtuple could be used as-is with
either of these:
 @namedtuple
 Fred = 'x y z'
or
 def Fred as namedtuple('x y z')
Critiquing my own suggestions, I find that the second one
looks more elegant and less confusing, but then I've never
really liked the decorator syntax much in the first place.
-- 
Greg