accessor/mutator functions

[Michael Spencer]

mirandacascade at yahoo.com wrote:
> When I look at how classes are set up in other languages (e.g. C++), I
> often observe the following patterns:
> 1) for each data member, the class will have an accessor member
> function (a Get<whatever> function)
> 2) for each data member, the class will have a mutator member function
> (a Set<whatver> function)
> 3) data members are never referenced directly; they are always
> referenced with the accessor and mutator functions
> 
> My questions are:
> a) Are the three things above considered pythonic?

No

> b) What are the tradeoffs of using getattr() and setattr() rather than
> creating accessor and mutator functions for each data member?

Use property descriptors instead:
http://www.python.org/2.2.1/descrintro.html#property
http://users.rcn.com/python/download/Descriptor.htm#properties

Michael