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

Sat Mar 12 14:22:31 CET 2011

Cesare Di Mauro wrote:
> 2011年3月11日 MRAB <python at mrabarnett.plus.com
> <mailto:python at mrabarnett.plus.com>>
[...]
> Clearly it's a method, so the instance would be passed as 'self',
> something like this:
>> def insert(self, date, trans, symbol, qty, price) from sqlite3:
> insert into stocks values (date, trans, symbol, qty, price)
>> but what happens to 'self' within the definition? It's not referred to
> in the SQL statement itself.
>>> I already do something like this:
>> DB.stocks += '2006-01-05', 'BUY', 'RHAT',100, 35.14
>> DB.stocks -= ID == 123
>> DB.stocks[ID == 123] = qty == qty + 1, price == 46.51
>> print DB.stocks[date,
> 'COUNT(*)'].GroupBy[date].OrderBy[date].Where[date['2011-01-01' :
> '2011-02-28']].List()
>> with Python 2.5+.
>> So there's no need for a new syntax to implement such things in a
> "pythonic" way.

As neat as this looks, IMO this is a misunderstanding on
(1) a pythonic way to invite foreign language code and syntax
 into python source code
(2) a pythonic way to hide SQL semantics under python syntax.
Tkinter did for tcl what SQLAlchemy does for SQL, and I feel both reveal a 
challenge for python to be more open to foreign code syntax. iow return to 
Caesar what's Caesar's.
Cheers, BB