From: Paul Prescod <paulp@...>
Date: 2002-09-06T02:00:40+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby aesthetics

On Thu, 5 Sep 2002, William Djaja Tjokroaminata wrote:

> Of course, because Ruby follows Eiffel's function call model
> (indistinguishable data access and function call, at least from user's
> perspective, by making the parentheses optional), in Ruby @data1 and
> self.data1 are different.  Now I don't remember if Python can do the
> "func=" form.  In other words, if in Ruby we write
>
>     def func (arg1, arg2, ...)
>         self.data1 = arg1    # access through accessor function
>         ....
>
> can we do this in Python?
>
>     def func (self, arg1, arg2, ...)
>         self.data1 () = arg1    # ???? syntax error ????
>         # probably should be the classic way:
>         self.data1 (arg1)    # access through accessor function

Python has two separate concepts of attribute-syntax and method call
syntax. But you can make code that looks like it is writing to attributes
really call methods (and of course a method can provide access to
attributes).

So you wouldn't write "self.data1() =" but "self.data1 =". If there is an
accessor for data1 then it will call it. Otherwise it will just write to
the instance dictionary.

 Paul Prescod