Accessors in Python (getters and setters)

[mystilleef]

I decided to change the name of an attribute. Problem is I've used the
attribute in several places spanning thousands of lines of code. If I
had encapsulated the attribute via an accessor, I wouldn't need to do
an unreliable and tedious search and replace accross several source
code files to achieve my goal. I could simply change the name of the
attribute and move on. Well, I'm glad python has properties. It's a
feature that should be advertised more, especially for large scale
python development.

Diez B. Roggisch wrote:
> mystilleef wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > What is the Pythonic way of implementing getters and setters. I've
> > heard
> > people say the use of accessors is not Pythonic. But why? And what is
> > the alternative? I refrain from using them because they smell
> > "Javaish."
> > But now my code base is expanding and I'm beginning to appreciate the
> > wisdom behind them. I welcome example code and illustrations.
>
> Which wisdom do you mean? The wisdom that a language that has no property
> mechanism and thus can't intercept setting and getting of instance members
> needs a bulky convention called JAVA Beans, so that _all_ uses of
> properties are tunneled through some code, even if only a few percent of
> these actually need that?
>
> Or the wisdom that strangling developers by putting access modifiers with
> approx. a dozen different rules in place is an annoyance to adult
> developers to say the least?
>
> These are the reasons they are not pythonic. We can intercept property
> access (see the property descriptor, http://pyref.infogami.com/property),
> and we trust in developers being able to judge form themselves if messing
> with internals of code is a good idea or not.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Diez