On Thu, 22 Aug 2013 06:39:48 +0000, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Aug 2013 05:13:03 +0000, Dan Sommers wrote:
>> 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.
> I'm not entirely sure how it could possibly be better. Since ham is
> just another name for eggs, it makes sense that they show the same
> docstring.
Yes, help(Spam1.eggs) and help(Spam1.ham) show the same docstring.
help(Spam1), however, doesn't show any docstring for ham; it shows that
ham = eggs(self).
>> And in any case, eggs looks somehow better than ham, because eggs has
>> its own def statement and ham doesn't.
>
> I don't think I agree, but perhaps that's just an aesthetic judgement
> where we disagree.
Yep, just the aesthetics.
> class Spam:
> def eggs(self):
> """eggs docstring"""
> return "ham and eggs"
> def ham(self):
> return self.eggs()
> ham.__doc__ = eggs.__doc__.replace('eggs', 'ham')
>
> This allows you two distinct docstrings, at the cost of duplicating
> the information in them. Spam.ham will be a *tiny* bit less efficient,
> due to the extra method call, but if you're worried about that, you're
> probably up to no good :-)
That I am up to no good goes without saying! ;-)
> But really, I would find that a confusing API. I would wonder what
> subtle difference in semantics there was between ham and eggs. I would
> much prefer to see that ham was just an alias:
>
> class Spam:
> def eggs(self):
> """eggs docstring"""
> pass
> ham = eggs
>
> which brings us back to the beginning of your post :-)
Yeah, okay, I'll go with that, despite the asymmetry. The names in
question are encrypt and decrypt, which for a stream cipher, are the
same.
Thanks, Steven, for confirming my ability to read the documentation and
play around in my interactive shell. ;-)
And Thanks, Fábio, for your suggestions, too.
--
Dan
--
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