Default argument to __init__

[Steve Holden]

netvaibhav at gmail.com wrote:
> Hi All:
> 
> Here's a piece of Python code and it's output. The output that Python
> shows is not as per my expectation. Hope someone can explain to me this
> behaviour:
> 
> [code]
> class MyClass:
>         def __init__(self, myarr=[]):
>                 self.myarr = myarr
> 
> myobj1 = MyClass()
> myobj2 = MyClass()
> 
> myobj1.myarr += [1,2,3]
> 
> myobj2.myarr += [4,5,6]
> 
> print myobj1.myarr
> print myobj2.myarr
> [/code]
> 
> The output is:
> [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
> [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
> 
> Why do myobj1.myarr and myobj2.myarr point to the same list? The
> default value to __init__ for the myarr argument is [], so I expect
> that every time an object of MyClass is created, a new empty list is
> created and assigned to myarr, but it seems that the same empty list
> object is assigned to myarr on every invocation of MyClass.__init__
> 
> It this behaviour by design? If so, what is the reason, as the
> behaviour I expect seems pretty logical.
> 
The default value of the keyword argument is evaluated once, at function 
declaration time. The idiom usually used to avoid this gotcha is:

     def __init__(self, myarr=None):
         if myarr is None:
             myarr = []

This ensures each call with the default myarr gets its own list.

regards
  Steve
-- 
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