On 22 Aug 2013 06:17, "Dan Sommers" <d...@tombstonezero.net> wrote: > > Greetings, > > I'm hava a class in which there are two equally useful names for one > method. Consider this design (there are other approaches, but that's > not what my question is about): > > class Spam1: > > def eggs(self): > '''Return the Meaning of Life.''' > return 42 > > ham = eggs > > help(Spam1) shows that ham = eggs(self), which isn't all bad, but it > could be better. help(Spam1.ham) shows the help for eggs; I know why, > but this could be better as well. And in any case, eggs looks somehow > better than ham, because eggs has its own def statement and ham doesn't. > > Now consider this design, designed to overcome the previous issues: > > class Spam2: > > def _private(self): > '''Return the Meaning of Life.''' > return 42 > > ham = _private > eggs = _private > > Now help(Spam2.ham) and help(Spam2.eggs) show the same thing, but > help(Spam2) hides _private and its docstring and shows that ham and eggs > both call _private. That's no good. I can expose _private (e.g., by > renaming it to public), but that defeats the purpose of making it > private in the first place. I can go ahead and define ham to invoke > eggs, but then I have to duplicate the docstring, and it's not > being-hit-on-the-head obvious that ham and eggs are simply synonyms for > the same functionality. > > I could put the documentation at the class level, but then it doesn't > show up as part of help(Spam2.eggs) or help(Spam1.ham). > > So is there a clean way to define SpamN such that help(SpamN), > help(SpamN.ham), and help(SpamN.eggs) all do the Right Thing, and the > symmetry of ham and eggs is perfectly obvious to the most casual > observer? > > Thanks, > Dan
If if one of them is the canonical method name, you could define the other with a docstring indicating it is an alias for the other. If you don't want to spend code lines you can just define a helper function for that. Heck, you can even warn a DeprecationWarning if the alias is just backwards compatibility.
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