sentinel 0.1.0

Usage

Sentinels are singleton objects that typically represent some end or terminating condition. Some singletons already exist in Python, like None and Ellipsis.

All that’s needed to create a sentinel is its name:

>>> import sentinel
>>> Nothing = sentinel.create('Nothing')
>>> Nothing
Nothing

This by itself is useful when other objects such as None, False, 0, -1, etc. are entirely valid values. For example, setting default values when all other values are valid with: dict.setdefault():

>>> MissingEntry = sentinel.create('MissingEntry')
>>> d = {'stdout': None, 'stdin': 0, 'EOF': -1}
>>> [d.setdefault(key, MissingEntry) for key in ('stdin', 'stdout', 'stderr')]
[0, None, MissingEntry]

Alternativly, using dict.get() when fetching values:

>>> d = {'stdout': None, 'stdin': 0, 'EOF': -1}
>>> d.get('stdout', MissingEntry)
None
>>> d.get('stdin', MissingEntry)
0
>>> d.get('stderr', MissingEntry)
MissingEntry

It’s known immediately which values was missing from the dictionary in a self-documenting manner.

Advanced Usage

Sentinels may also inherit from base classes, or implement extra methods.

Consider a binary tree with two kinds of nodes: interior nodes (Node) which contain some payload and leaves (Leaf), which simply terminate traversal.

To create singleton leaf which implements a search method and an is_leaf property, you may provide any extra class attributes in the ``extra_methods`` keyword argument:

def _search_leaf(self, key):
    raise KeyError(key)

Leaf = sentinel.create('Leaf', extra_methods={
    'search': _search_leaf,
    'is_leaf': property(lambda self: True)
})

class Node(object):
    def __init__(self, key, payload, left=Leaf, right=Leaf):
        self.left = left
        self.right = right
        self.key = key
        self.payload = payload

    def search(self, key):
        if key < self.__key:
            return self.left.search(key)
        elif key > self.key:
            return self.right.search(key)
        else:
            return self.payload

    is_leaf = property(lambda: false)