How to get/set class attributes in Python

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sun, 12 Jun 2005 14:40:26 +0000, Chris Spencer wrote:

> Being an untyped language, Python does not require you to enforce types. 
> However, for those that require such functionality, you can get away 
> with using the "assert" statement.

Assuming that Python isn't executed with the optimize switch, which
disables assert.

$ python -O
Python 2.3.3 (#1, May  7 2004, 10:31:40)
[GCC 3.3.3 20040412 (Red Hat Linux 3.3.3-7)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
py>
py>
py> def tester(x):
...     assert type(x) == type(0)
...     print "%s is an integer." % x
...
py> tester(3)
'3 is an integer'
py> tester("hello")
'hello is an integer'