Class Inheritance - What am I doing wrong?

[Gabriel Genellina]

En Thu, 24 Apr 2008 18:18:01 -0300, Brian Munroe  
<brian.e.munroe at gmail.com> escribió:

> Ok, so thanks everyone for the helpful hints.  That *was* a typo on my
> part (should've been super(B...) not super(A..), but I digress)
>
> I'm building a public API.  Along with the API I have a few custom
> types that I'm expecting API users to extend, if they need too.  If I
> don't use name mangling, isn't that considered bad practice (read not
> defensive programming) to not protect those 'private' fields?

Please read this article:  
<http://dirtsimple.org/2004/12/python-is-not-java.html>
You don't have to define any getXXX/setXXX methods, just use a public  
attribute (if it is supposed to be public, of course). In case you have to  
do something special with it (like notifying some observers when the value  
changes, by example) use a property instead, and use a *single* leading  
underscore in the protected attribute name. In any case, the client code  
remains the same: some_object.attribute_name = value

In Python, a single leading underscore means "this is an implementation  
detail, don't mess with it". This is a convention and we all -adult and  
responsible programmers- follow that convention. Double leading  
underscores are a means to avoid name conflicts with subclasses - don't  
use them unless you have a valid reason. Double leading and trailing  
underscores are __special__ names reserved by Python itself.

-- 
Gabriel Genellina