Do I need "self" and "other"?

[Nick Dumas]

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Kurda Yon wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I found one example which defines the addition of two vectors as a
> method of a class. It looks like that:
> 
> class Vector:
>   def __add__(self, other):
>     data = []
>     for j in range(len(self.data)):
>       data.append(self.data[j] + other.data[j])
>     return Vector(data)
> 
> In this example one uses "self" and "other". Does one really need to
> use this words? And, if yes, why? I have replaced "self" by "x" and
> "other" by "y" and everything looks OK. Is it really OK or I can have
> some problem in some cases?
> 
> Thank you!
In Python, when defining the methods of a class, you pass self as an
argument to these methods so that they can have access to the class's
variables and methods.

Example:

class Foo():
	self.x = 5

def bar(self):
	print self.x

def baz():
	print self.x #This raises an error.
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