Attribute definition, WHY?

[Matthew Dixon Cowles]

On Tue, 12 Sep 2000 17:17:42 GMT, bragib at my-deja.com
<bragib at my-deja.com> wrote:

>Why would you want to do the following:
>
>class A:
>   attr1 = [1,2]
>   def __init__(self,name):
>       self.name = name
>
>and not
>
>class A:
>   def __init__(self,name):
>       self.name = name
>       self.attr1 = [1,2]
>
>Are there benefits to the first definition?

Bragi,
In the first definition, the value of attr1 is shared by the whole
class. That's useful for counters and whatnot. So, given the first
definition, code like this:

foo=A('foo')
bar=A('bar')
A.attr1=[3,4]
print foo.attr1
print bar.attr1

would produce

[3, 4]
[3, 4]

Regards,
Matt