Re: Accessors in Python (getters and setters)

mystilleef wrote:
Hello,

Thanks for the responses. The reason I want to change the name of the
attribute is because it doesn't reflect the purpose of the attribute,
anymore. The attribute was originally a string object, but not anymore.
It is primarily a readability issue. There are also a few key
attributes I don't want developers, including myself, fiddling with.
Properties /accessors are good because they allow you to encapsulate
attributes so you can change implementations at will. Some of you have
argued I would have needed to change accessor names too if I had
misnamed them earlier. It's hard to say. I find myself changing the
names of attributes a lot more frequently than I do functions or
methods. Choosing a crappy attribute name is effortless for me,
especially during intense coding sessions. I usually realize I've
choosing a crappy attribute name the next day, sometimes even later.
However, I put a lot more effort into choosing method and function
names, especially when I know it may likely be a public API.

What you need to understand here is that in Python,
1/ methods *are* attributes
2/ every attribute whose name is not prefixed by a leading underscore is
considered part of the api ('__magic__' names being a special case).

So it has nothing to do with "data vs method" dichotomy (which makes no
sens in a languages where functions and methods are objects), only with
"API vs implementation". You choosed a crappy name for an attribute
that's part of the API, so it's *exactly* the same case as if you had
chosen a crappy name for a public method in Java. Think of public "data"
attributes as magical getter/setters with the most straightforward
behaviour, and of properties as the way to override this default behaviour.

Plus it's
really hard to choose crappy accessor name.

What about getMyCrappyAttributeName/setMyCrappyAttributeName ?-)



--
bruno desthuilliers
python -c "print '@'.join(['.'.join([w[::-1] for w in p.split('.')]) for
p in 'onurb@xxxxxxxxxxx'.split('@')])"
.