[patch 4/3] Header file reduction - Tools for contrib

[David Malcolm]

On Tue, 2015-10-06 at 14:02 +0200, Bernd Schmidt wrote:
[...]
> > No commenting on the quality of python code... :-) I was
> > learning python on the fly.    Im sure some things are QUITE awful.,

[...]

> > + def ii_base (iinfo):
> > +   return iinfo[0]
> > +
> > + def ii_path (iinfo):
> > +   return iinfo[1]
> > +
> > + def ii_include_list (iinfo):
> > +   return iinfo[2]
> > +
> > + def ii_include_list_cond (iinfo):
> > +   return iinfo[3]
> > +
> > + def ii_include_list_non_cond (iinfo):
> > +   l = ii_include_list (iinfo)
> > +   for n in ii_include_list_cond (iinfo):
> > +     l.remove (n)
> > +   return l
> > +
> > + def ii_macro_consume (iinfo):
> > +   return iinfo[4]
> > +
> > + def ii_macro_define (iinfo):
> > +   return iinfo[5]
> > +
> > + def ii_src (iinfo):
> > +   return iinfo[6]
> > +
> > + def ii_src_line (iinfo):
> > +   return iinfo[7]
> 
> That's a lot of little functions with pretty much no clue for the reader 
> what's going on. It looks like maybe there's an array where a struct 
> should have been used?

FWIW, this kind of thing is often made a lot neater and easier to debug
by using "namedtuple" from within the "collections" module in the
standard library:

https://docs.python.org/2/library/collections.html#collections.namedtuple

which lets you refer e.g. to field 5 of the tuple as a "define"
attribute.

  iinfo.define

and avoid all these accessor functions (and you can add methods and
properties, giving e.g. a "list_non_cond").

Not that I'm asking you to rewrite it; merely that namedtuple is one of
many gems in the python stdlib that are worth knowing about.

[...]

Hope this is constructive
Dave