Re: Opinions? Tcl Python Perl, Virtues/failings

Ken Manheimer (klm@NIST.GOV)
Fri, 31 Mar 1995 11:45:06 -0500 (EST)

> I agree that Python's data abstraction mechanisms are better than
> Tcl's. However there is one small thing I would like to see in
> Python (which maybe you can do?), and it would boost the integratedness
> of Python. And this thing is to be able to inherit from inbuilt classes.
> I wanted to make a sub-class of a file object, but could not it
> seems.

Currently, the conventional approach is to create class-object wrappers
for builtin types, in order to provide inheritance for them. However,
someone (don beaudry) has developed, and is working on integrating, an
extension that i believe provides for inheritence, among other things,
from builtin types. I'm not sure, but i think it may be incorporated in
some way with the python core.

For some examples of making object wrappers for builtin types, see
UserDict.py and UserList.py in the distribution library.

ken
ken.manheimer@nist.gov, 301 975-3539