Michal Kwiatkowski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Alex Martelli napisa?(a): > >> IMHO that's not very consistent. > > > > How so? Given the lower-level semantics of descriptors (and the > > distinction between overriding and non), are you suggesting that > > property should not be a type but a factory function able to return > > instances of either overriding or non-overriding types? I'm not sure how > > that complication would make things "consistent" in your view. > > Nothing in property documentation suggest that if you don't define > __set__ method, you won't be able to set an attribute. It just states > "Return a property attribute for new-style classes". After reading a bit > about descriptors I've just assumed that property is a handy way to > create (any) descriptors. Learning that it only creates overriding > descriptors was a bit shocking. I'm not suggesting it's bad behavior, > only that it seemed unexpected for an unaware programmer. What at first > glance looked like a shortcut, turned out to be designed for a specific > use case.
Yes, I see that the docs at <http://docs.python.org/lib/built-in-funcs.html> are too curt about exactly what it is that property returns -- no inconsistency, just too-scarce docs. The in-development draft at <http://docs.python.org/dev/lib/built-in-funcs.html> is just about the same. Why don't you try your hand at making the docs better? As <http://www.python.org/dev/doc/> points out, *Documentation submissions are welcome in plain text from contributors without LaTeX knowledge*. I'd give it a try myself, but doing anything except working on the 2nd edition of the Nutshell right now would seriously risk ending up strangled... sigh -- once the Nutshell's 2nd ed is done and over with, and I've recovered from it, I'll need to get around to serious contribution to the standard Python docs!-) Alex -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
