Re: OT: dotted names

On 2011-04-15 22:33:08 +0000, P.J. Eby said:

> At 04:11 PM 4/15/2011 -0400, Fred Drake wrote:
>> These end users don't really care if the object identified is a class or
>> function in module, a nested attribute on a class, or anything else, so
>> long as it does what it's advertised to do.  By not pushing implementation
>> details into the identifier, the package maintainer is free to change the
>> implementation in more ways, without creating backward incompatibility.
> 
> That would be one advantage of using entry points
> instead.    (i.e., the user doesn't specify the object location,
> the package author does.)
> 
> Note, however, that one must perform considerably more work to
> resolve a name, when you don't know whether each part of the name is
> a module or an attribute.

Not if, as you mention, you use an explicit format.  The format my 
resolver code uses (and this code is utilized in marrow.mailer for 
manager/transport lookup, marrow.server.http's command-line script to 
resolve WSGI applications, and marrow.templating to resolve templates) 
covers the following:

:: <object>
:: entrypoint_name
:: ../relative/path/to/something
:: ./relative/path/to/something
:: /absolute/path/to/something
:: package.relative/path/to/something
:: package.absolute.path