On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 8:54 PM, Michael Foord <fuzzy...@voidspace.org.uk> wrote: > The problem with "data attributes" is that it doesn't mean *anything*, which > I suppose is useful for invented terminology, but it means it doesn't convey > anything precise to those who haven't heard the term before. If it becomes > widely used then that changes I guess. I'd still normally just use > "attributes" though...
In this context, precision is an illusion. There is *no* precise terminology, not only because Python blurs the boundaries by design in many respects (callable or not, method or not, attribute or not, etc), but also because *people* use the same words to mean slightly different things. The best we can hope for is to encourage the right way of thinking about the situation, and in that regard you have the complete set of attributes accessible via an object (i.e. via __getattribute__), some of which are callables (and may or may not act like instance methods) and the remainder of which are data attributes (some of which may incidentally be callable, even if they aren't used that way). How a *particular* attribute is classified is not an inherent property of the attribute, but also an artifact of the way it is used by the application. 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
