[Zope] DTML equiv of eval (again).

[Evan Simpson]

chas wrote:

> In fact, this doesn't look very consistent to me. And *this* is the
> sort of stuff that really needs to be explained in foolproof, layman
> terms.

Sad but true, and there isn't a whole lot that can be done about it
except try to make canonical ways of doing these things  prominent in
the documentation.  If we changed _[] to allow periods as object
separators, we'd break the ability to have Ids with periods in them, and
while I've already hacked using '/' as a separator, it's not really
practical to have Python expressions use that notation.

> Anyway, thanks big time Evan, at least my earlier problems have an
> explanation for them - I hate getting things to work and not knowing
> why.

Glad to help.

> ps. returning to my comments in reply to Picasso's mail, how
>     would/should I have debugged this properly then ?  I'm relying
>     on the Force a bit too much at the moment.

I rely on the Source, for a powerful ally it is.  Sadly, it also takes a
lot of reading and Python knowlege, and I can't really suggest a better
way.