[Pytables-users] __getattr__ vs. __getitem__ (Natural naming)

[Norbert N. <Nor...@gm...>]

Hi there,

an idea that I have carried around for some time now:

I know that natural naming is seen as one of the important features of 
pytables. For interactive use, this certainly is true. For me - mainly using 
scripts - it gets in the way quite often. I'm using getattr/setattr more 
often than natural naming, since the attribute names are quite often handled 
as strings.

How about generally defining __???item__ in parallel to the corresponding 
__???attr__ ?

 mygroup["mynode"] = Node(...)
 print mygroup["mynode"]
 del mygroup["mynode"]
would be identical to
 mygroup.mynode = Node(...)
 print mygroup.mynode
 del mygroup.mynode

in case nodename == "mynode"

 mygroup[nodename] = Node(...)
 print mygroup[nodename]
 del mygroup[nodename]
certainly is nicer than
 setattr(mygroup,nodename,Node(...))
 print getattr(mygroup,nodename)
 delattr(mygroup,nodename)

especially, since you are not dealing with an HDF5-Attribute (!!!)

In a further step, it might even be a good idea, to make __???item__ the 
standard way that is used everywhere within the pytables library and 
__???attr__ just an additional option falling back to __???item__

This would probably beautify the library code quite a bit (getattr/setattr are 
called quite often) but even more important: it would releave the name 
conflict of 'Python-attributes' vs. 'HDF5-Attributes'. Instead of thinking of 
'Python-attributes', one would think of 'items' which may be either 
'Attributes' or 'Nodes'.

Greetings,
Norbert

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_________________________________________Norbert Nemec
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