what is the idiom for copy lots of params into self?

[Jean-Paul Calderone]

On 10 Jan 2007 14:46:54 -0800, Emin <emin.shopper at gmail.com> wrote:
>Dear Experts,
>
>When writing large classes, I sometimes find myself needing to copy a
>lot of parameters from the argument of __init__ into self. Instead of
>having twenty lines that all basically say something like self.x = x, I
>often use __dict__ via something like:
>
>class example:
>     def __init__(self,a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n):
>         for name in
>['a','b','c','d','e','f','g','h','i','j','k','l','m','n']:
>             self.__dict__[name] = locals()[name]
>
>This saves a lot of code and makes it easier to see what is going on,
>but it seems like there should be a better idiom for this task. Any
>suggestions?

I use a helper, like 

  http://divmod.org/trac/browser/trunk/Epsilon/epsilon/structlike.py#L35

Jean-Paul