decorators

[John Henry]

I must be very thick. I keep reading about what decorators are and I
still don't have a good feel about it. See, for example:

http://alex.dojotoolkit.org/?p=564

and:

http://soiland.no/software/decorator

What exactly do I use decorators for?

[Paul McGuire]

"John Henry" <jo**********@hotmail.comwrote in message
news:11**********************@b28g2000cwb.googlegr oups.com...

>I must be very thick. I keep reading about what decorators are and I
still don't have a good feel about it. See, for example:

http://alex.dojotoolkit.org/?p=564

and:

http://soiland.no/software/decorator

What exactly do I use decorators for?

John -

See if any of these examples give you some ideas on how you might use a
decorator: http://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonDecoratorLibrary

-- Paul

[Carsten Haese]

On Wed, 2006-11-08 at 12:37 -0800, John Henry wrote:

I must be very thick. I keep reading about what decorators are and I
still don't have a good feel about it. See, for example:

http://alex.dojotoolkit.org/?p=564

and:

http://soiland.no/software/decorator

What exactly do I use decorators for?

Decorators are a tool for executing common code when a function is
defined and/or when it's called. This reduces code duplication by
allowing you to factor out commonly performed steps.

If you find yourself writing different functions that share a lot of
setup/teardown code, or if you find yourself doing a lot of repetitive
housekeeping for each function you're defining, decorators eliminate
this duplication.

You've already been given a bunch of different examples, so I won't bore
you with more contrived examples. If none of the examples make you say
"wow, I could use this" and if you don't find yourself writing
repetitive setup/teardown/housekeeping code, you can probably live quite
comfortably without using decorators.

-Carsten

[Paddy]

John Henry wrote:

I must be very thick. I keep reading about what decorators are and I
still don't have a good feel about it. See, for example:

http://alex.dojotoolkit.org/?p=564

and:

http://soiland.no/software/decorator

What exactly do I use decorators for?

Here's my learning experience on decorators:
http://paddy3118.blogspot.com/2006/0...ttributes.html
especially:
http://paddy3118.blogspot.com/2006/0...signed-by.html

[Paul McGuire]

"Carsten Haese" <ca*****@uniqsys.comwrote in message
news:ma***************************************@pyt hon.org...

If none of the examples make you say
"wow, I could use this" and if you don't find yourself writing
repetitive setup/teardown/housekeeping code, you can probably live quite
comfortably without using decorators.

Amen! Don't force yourself to learn decorators if you don't need them at
the moment. Wait until you start repeating the same code (lock/unlock,
dbready/dbcommit, logstart/logend, etc.) around multiple functions, then go
back and try applying a decorator to simplify the job. Having a real use
for them will make it much easier to "get".

I will say, though, that I found the memoizing decorator to be especially
intriguing and eye-opening, and didn't realize I needed it until I saw it
laid out in front of me.

-- Paul