python: should decorator names be actions or descriptions?

Question

Say I have a decorator which causes the function to print out any exceptions and return None, if an exception happens, instead of failing. Assuming this is a good idea, what's the preferred naming style?

a)

@ignore_exceptions
def foobar(a, b, c):
    raise ValueError("This function always fails...")

b)

@ignores_exceptions
def foobar(a, b, c):
    raise ValueError("This function always fails...")

That is: should it a) be a command (the decorator tells the function to do something different), or b) a description (the decorator lets the progammer know an attribute of the function)?

Answer 1

I think the active version (ignore_exceptions) is more used than the descriptive version (ignores_exceptions), at least in the Python code bases that I'm familiar with.

The PEP 8 guideline does have a section on naming conventions but it does not offer much help in this case. In any case, consistency across your code base is the most important thing.

Answer 2

I would say that ignore_exceptions is better here, simply based on what I am seeing in the PythonDecoratorLibrary page.

Some example decorator names used there are countcalls and dump_args, which is more consistent with ignore_exceptions than ignores_exceptions.

Consistency is really the only reason to choose one over the other, since both make it clear what is happening.