[Github-comments] [geany/geany] Different colors for objects, methods and attributes? (#2441)

[elextr]

Unfortunately (from the point of view of highlighting) with a totally dynamic language like Python you must effectively execute the code to find the type of a name.  And without knowing that any expression based on the name cannot be known.

In your example, `example`, `__init__`, and `world` are declarations, that is syntax that explicitly defines a name and what type it is (`example` is a class, and `__init__` and `world` are functions and the highlighter identifies them as such).

But in `e=example()` there is no syntax to say `e` is being declared, it is an assignment expression which would have to be evaluated, or at least type inferred, to decide that `e` is being declared here, and evaluation and type inference is beyond the pay grade of simple syntax highlighters.

Even `example()` is no guarantee that it is a class instantiation, since Python is a dynamic language the name can be redefined between the class declaration and the use of `example()` so as I said evaluation or complex type inference would be needed to see what `example` is bound to at any point in the code.  And also the type of a name may be different depending on which branch of an `if` the code takes, eg:

```
if foo:
   blah=example()
else:
   blah=other()
blah.x
```
So what is `blah` and `blah.x`, depends on `foo` and that might be the result of a data read, but at least it involves evaluating the code that sets `foo`.

AFAICT even IDEs like Eclipse or Python's own Idle don't do any better with highlighting.

Static languages do better with highlighting because all names are declared, and the type of names can't be changed, although it still isn't perfect due to scope issues.


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