On 6/27/2011 4:24 AM, Antoine Pitrou wrote:
Le Mon, 27 Jun 2011 11:32:32 +1000,
Nick Coghlan<ncogh...@gmail.com> a écrit :
"Members" is a historical relic that is best replaced by "attributes"
or "data attributes" if we want to explicitly exclude methods for some
reason. "Methods" is a subset of attributes that explicitly excludes
data attributes.
While I know it is technically right, I find it a bit strange to refer to
methods as "attributes". We're describing an API, not the inner working of
the object model. Also, people just discovering Python will probably be a
bit surprised if we start refer to methods as "attributes".
FWIW, I tend to understand "members" as "methods + attributes", which makes
it a nice term to use for that purpose.
Let me repeat that that is historically wrong for Python, and illustrate
why the term 'members' should not be used. From the 1.5 Language
Reference, 3.2 Standard type hierarchy: "There are also some 'generic'
special attributes, not listed with the individual objects: __methods__
is a list of the method names of a built-in object, if it has any;
__members__ is a list of the data attribute names of a built-in object,
if it has any."
--
Terry Jan Reedy
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