On Mon, 13 Sep 2010 06:05:23 am Alan Gauld wrote: > I think static methjods are largely a mistake of history. ISTR They > were > introduced into python before class methods (not by much - one > release?)
No, they were introduced at the same time. But it turned out that the use cases Guido van Rossum envisaged for them weren't as compelling as he first imagined. At some point he wrote that staticmethod was the only Python feature where there was no example of it being used in the standard library, apart from tests to ensure that staticmethod worked correctly. Of course that doesn't mean that staticmethod is a bad feature, only that it's a very specialized function. It probably should have been moved into functools. If anyone is interested in descriptors like classmethod and staticmethod, I have published a recipe for a third member of the family: http://code.activestate.com/recipes/577030/ "dualmethod" creates a method that receives the instance when you call it normally from the instance, and the class when you call it from the class. This makes it like a cross between ordinary methods and class methods. -- Steven D'Aprano _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - [email protected] To unsubscribe or change subscription options: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
