Programmer Humor @lemmy.ml raldone01 @lemmy.world 1w ago

Using comments as arguments in python.

Python allows programmers to pass additional arguments to functions via comments. Now armed with this knowledge head out and spread it to all code bases.

Feel free to use the code I wrote in your projects.

Link to the source code: https://github.com/raldone01/python_lessons_py/blob/v2.0.0/lesson_0_comments.ipynb

Image transcription:

# First we have to import comment_arguments from arglib
# Sadly arglib is not yet a standard library.
from arglib import comment_arguments


def add(*args, **kwargs):
    c_args, c_kwargs = comment_arguments()
    return sum([int(i) for i in args + c_args])


# Go ahead and change the comments.
# See how they are used as arguments.

result = add()  # 1, 2
print(result)
# comment arguments can be combined with normal function arguments
result = add(1, 2)  # 3, 4
print(result)

Output:

3
10

This is version v2.0.0 of the post: https://github.com/raldone01/python_lessons_py/tree/v2.0.0

Note:

v1.0.0 of the post can be found here: https://github.com/raldone01/python_lessons_py/tree/v1.0.0

Choosing lib as the name for my module was a bit devious. I did it because I thought if I am creating something cursed why not go all the way?

Regarding misinformation:

I thought simply posting this in programmer humor was enough. Anyways, the techniques shown here are not yet regarded best practice. Decide carefully if you want to apply the shown concepts in your own code bases.

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93 comments

I assume the people freaking out about how dumb python is didn't bother to read the code and have never coded in python in their life, because the behavior here is totally reasonable. Python doesn't parse comments normally, which is what you'd expect, but if you tell it to read the raw source code and then parse the raw source code for the comments specifically, of course it does.

You would never, ever accidentally do this.

...you'd also never, ever do it on purpose.
- yeah frankly this post is borderline misinformation, they specifically import a library to read comments as arguments, it's like redefining keywords in C and complaining about C being dumb
  
  I'm going to say it just is misinformation, if that's what "lib" is here.
  
  Yeah. 'lib' isn't a standard Python library, it's the name of the abomination that this person created. Since python has quite a bit of useful introspection, they can do something like:
  
  get the stack
  
  find the exact call to abomination.add()
  
  reparse the text of that line, turn the text of the comment into actual numbers, and add them
  
  Now, I don't know if python keeps the comments around, so it may involve getting the filename and line number, reading the file, and manually extracting the comment text from that line.
  
  It's not even actually called lib. The line just straight up isn't in the image "transcribed", and it's from arglib import comment_arguments in the original code.
  
  Yeah, I gave this one a downvote.
  
  I updated the source after this post was made. The image transcription still holds. I did not update the image and the post text.
  
  You can view the git history. I will tag the specific commit at the time of the post later and update it accordingly.
  
  Ah, and you're the author. That kind of changes the whole context here.
  
  It doesn't mean much, but have your upvote back.

93 comments