Newbie: anything resembling static?

[Paul Rubin]

phil at dspfactory.com (Phil Rittenhouse) writes:
>     def send_byte(x): ...
>         static initialized = False
>         if not initialized:
>             do_init()
>             initialized = True
>         xmit(x)
>
> If you used this function the way you might use print() for debugging 
> purposes, it might be called in hundreds of places in a large project.
> If you wrapped it in a class, you'd have to take care of creating the object
> before anyone calls it and sharing that object around somehow so everyone 
> can access it.  It seems like a lot of complexity for what is supposed 
> to be a very simple task.

Sharing the class instance around doesn't seem any harder (or any
different) than sharing the function object around.  If you run
something like

   class _port:
      def __init__(self):
         self.initialized = false
      def do_init(self):
         self.initialized = true
         ...
      def send_byte(self, x):
         if not self.initialized:
            self.do_init()
         xmit(x)

   send_byte = _port().send_byte

then you can use send_byte just as in your earlier definition.