Daniel Keep wrote:
bearophile wrote:
Andrei Alexandrescu:
Pascalize!S s;
s.foo(); // works
s.Foo(); // works too
s.fOo(); // yup, works again
I can show something even more extreme :-)
What we are discussing in this thread is named the __getattr__ method in Python:
http://docs.python.org/reference/datamodel.html#object.__getattr__
Note that in Python there's something even more powerful, __getattribute__:
http://docs.python.org/reference/datamodel.html#object.__getattribute__
So I have created this, that I actually use in a large Graph class of mine that
has many methods:
http://code.activestate.com/recipes/409000/
Such class can be used from the interactive shell too, to play with graphs in
an interactive way, modify them, plot them, etc.
Often you may not remember the name of a method you need, or you may mistype
it. In such situation __getattr__ is being called. It collects the class method
names, removed the useless ones, and performs a similarity search between the
given wrong method name and the strings in that list. Then returns the 4-5 most
similar ones, each one followed by their docstring, that shows the function
signature and the purpose of the method. So you can usually find the method you
were looking for, and use it. This is useful both when using such Graph class
from the command line and when you are writing code without an IDE that helps
you finding method names.
That Python code of mine becomes doable in D too (using for example my very
fast approximate string distance. This is a case where you don't need the list
of changes, but just the distance number. So superdan can rest in peace).
Bye,
bearophile
There's an interesting idea...
Instead of "No member 'foo'", you could have "No member 'foo'; did you
mean 'far' or 'fur'?"
-- Daniel
Heh. The string kernels in std.numeric
(http://erdani.dreamhosters.com/d/web/phobos/std_numeric.html) are to
help with exactly that.
Andrei
