initializing mutable class attributes

[Jorge Godoy]

"Dan Perl" <dperl at rogers.com> writes:

> Not in Python.  A user of my library has to invoke the parent's class
> __init__ in their own __init__.  What happens if, in a future release, I get
> rid of the __init__ in the parent class?  Or the other way around.  An early
> release does not have a parent __init__, the users don't invoke it because
> they can't, and then, in a future release, I add the parent __init__ because
> I added some attributes.  It breaks all the users' code.  This is poor
> encapsulation.


I'm getting in the middle of the discussion so forgive-me if this example
doesn't apply here.


>>> class test(object):
...     def test(self):
...             print "Just a test"
...
>>> class derived(test):
...     def __init__(self):
...             test.__init__(self)
...     def showit(self):
...             self.test()
...
>>> d = derived()
>>> d.showit()
Just a test
>>>  

There was no "__init__" explicitly defined in 'test'. 


Be seeing you,
-- 
Godoy.     <godoy at ieee.org>