On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 12:08 AM, R. David Murray <rdmur...@bitdance.com> wrote: > While I agree that using 'attribute' when only methods are being discussed > would most likely be confusing, and that it can be tricky to clearly > word things when both are being discussed, the existence in the language > of getattr, setattr, and related methods argues against using the term > 'members'.
Yep, to me "attribute" just means "something that can be accessed using attribute notation". What it actually *is* is completely up for grabs at that point. > 'data attributes' can so easily become something else in Python...it > seems to me that the only real difference between 'data attributes' and > 'method attributes' in Python is that the latter can be called and the > former can't. But even that is not an accurate distinction, since a > 'data attribute' could, in fact, return a callable. > > I guess what I'm saying is that I am more comfortable calling them > all attributes than calling them all members. The term 'members' > isn't used anywhere in the language itself, as far as I can recall, > whereas getattr and setattr are evidence that the language considers > them all attributes. I think we do the documentation readers a > disservice by obscuring that fact by using other terminology. It's worse than that - the specific meaning of "members" in the context of Python's history specifically *excludes* methods. The superset is "attributes" - as noted, the names of the builtins and magic methods make that terminology quite explicit. Cheers, Nick. -- Nick Coghlan | ncogh...@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
