sentinel 0.1.1

Usage

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

Alternatively, 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 value 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 search 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. The following is a full example of both the singleton Leaf and its Node counterpart:

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)

Example usage:

>>> tree = Node(2, 'bar', Node(1, 'foo'), Node(3, 'baz'))
>>> tree.search(1)
'foo'
>>> tree.search(4)
Traceback (most recent call last):
    ...
KeyError: 2

Advanced usage 2

Another usage is inheriting from a tuple, in order to do tuple comparison. For example, consider a scenario where a certain order must be maintained, but ordering matters. If the key being used to sort is an integer, a plain object instance will always sort greater:

>>> (1, ..., ...) < (object(), None, None)
True

Now say we want to encode this in a neat, self-documenting package. This is can be done by create a sentinel that inherits from tuple and is instantiated with the given tuple:

arg = (object(), None, None)
AlwaysGreater = sentinel.create('AlwaysGreater', (tuple,), {}, args)

This will call tuple((object(), None, None)). This means the singleton will now behave exactly as expected:

>>> (1, ..., ...) < AlwaysGreater
True