What is proper way to require a method to be overridden?

[Paddy]

belinda thom wrote:

> On Jan 4, 2007, at 9:28 PM, Carl Banks wrote:
>
> > jeremito wrote:
> >> I am writing a class that is intended to be subclassed.  What is the
> >> proper way to indicate that a sub class must override a method?
> >
> > You can't (easily).
> >
> > If your subclass doesn't override a method, then you'll get a big fat
> > AttributeError when someone tries to call it.  But this doesn't stop
> > someone from defining a subclass that fails to override the method.
> > Only when it's called will the error show up.  You can, as others have
> > noted, define a method that raises NotImplementedError.  But this
> > still
> > doesn't stop someone from defining a subclass that fails to override
> > the method.  The error still only occurs when the method is called.
> >
> > There are some advantages to using NotImplementedError:
> >
> > 1. It documents the fact that a method needs to be overridden
> > 2. It lets tools such as pylint know that this is an abstract method
> > 3. It results in a more informative error message
> >
> > But, in the end, if someone wants to define a class that defiantly
> > refuses to declare a method, you can't stop them.
>
> This is the con of a dynamic language...
In a language that has statements to force the user to over-ride a
method when a class is sub-classed, what is to stop the lazy
sub-classer from doing the equivalent of:

  define override_me(self, ...):
    pass

And so get code through the compiler,, allowing them to 'meet their
targets'?

- Paddy.