Russ P. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The idea of being able to discern properties of an object by its name > alone is something that is not normally done in programming in > general.
Really? You obviously haven't noticed Prolog, Smalltalk, Haskell, ML, or Erlang then. And that's just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. * Prolog and Erlang distinguish atoms from variables by the case of the first letter; also `_' is magical and is equivalent to a new variable name every time you use it. * Smalltalk distinguishes between global and local variables according to the case of the first letter. * Haskell distinguishes between normal functions and constructors (both data constructors and type constructors) by the case of the first letter, and has Prolog's `_' convention. * ML allows a single-quote in variable names, but reserves names beginning with a single-quote for type variables. It also has Prolog's `_' convention. As far as I can see, discerning properties of a thing from its name seems relatively common. -- [mdw] -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list