Question about properties

[Fredrik Lundh]

Frank Millman wrote:

 > I thought that the main point of using property was to prevent direct
 > access to the attribute.

Not "prevent access to" as much as "add behaviour to".

> Is this a valid comment, or does it come under the category of 'we are
> all adults here'?

The latter.  And the "__" doesn't provide much protection, really (as 
we'll see below).

> While experimenting, I came across the following curiosity.
> 
> I know that prefixing a class attribute with a double-underscore makes
> it difficult to access the attribute externally. Here is a simple
> example -
> 
>>>> class Test(object):
> ...    def __init__(self,x):
> ...        self.x = x
> ...        self.__y = 123
> ...    def get_y(self):
> ...        return self.__y
> 
>>>> t = Test(99)
>>>> t.x
> 99
>>>> t.get_y()
> 123
>>>> t.__y
> AttributeError: 'Test' object has no attribute '__y'
> 
> I was surprised that I could do the following -
> 
>>>> t.__y = 456
>>>> t.__y
> 456
>>>> t.get_y()
> 123
> 
> It's not important, but I am curious to know what is going on
> internally here.

hint:

 >>> dir(t)
['_Test__y', ..., '__y', 'get_y', 'x']
 >>> t._Test__y
123
 >>> t.__y
456

</F>