Noob: What is a slot? Me trying to understand another's code

[Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch]

On Tue, 04 Sep 2007 13:03:16 -0500, Carnell, James E wrote:

> I am thinking about purchasing a book, but wanted to make sure I could
> get through the code that implements what the book is about (Artificial
> Intelligence a Modern Approach). Anyway, I'm not a very good programmer
> and OOP is still sinking in, so please don't answer my questions like I
> really know anything.
> 
> MY QUESTION:
> What is a slot? In class Object below the __init__ has a slot.  Note:
> The slot makes use of a data object called 'percept' that is used in the
> TableDrivenAgent(Agent) at the bottom of this post. I am guessing this
> is a type of Finite State Machine (I haven't bought the book yet so I am
> guessing).
> 
> […]
> 
> Anyway, why a slot (whatever that is)?
> 
> [Example code snipped.]

If you want to learn Python don't do it with that book because the authors
seem to write another programming language using Python syntax. I guess
there's an older issue of that book that used the SmallTalk programming
language and they switched to Python syntactically but not mentally and not
the vocabulary. A "slot" in SmallTalk is called "attribute" in Python.

Ciao,
	Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch