is python Object oriented??

[Hung Vo]

On Jan 30, 4:19 am, Michael Torrie <torr... at gmail.com> wrote:
> M Kumar wrote:
> > but still I am not clear of the execution of the code, when we write or
> > execute a piece of python code without defining class, predefined class
> > attributes are available (not all but __name__ and __doc__ are available).
> > does it mean anything to this topic. Is it necessory to have __module__,
> > __dict__ and __bases__ for a class object in python?
>
> I think you're confused as to what object-oriented means.  OO defines
> the internals of a language more than a particular programming paradigm.
>  Obviously python lets you program in a variety of paradigms, including
> procedural and event-driven, but it is all very much object-oriented.
> So ignore those that say python doesn't force you to use OOP, when in
> fact it's unavoidable.  It's just that you're not forced to place all
> your code in class definitions.  You don't need to because your code is
> already object-oriented in that you're manipulating objects and their
> attributes.
>
> As others have said, Python is an object-oriented language through and
> through, closer to Smalltalk in many ways, the grand-daddy of all OO
> languages.
>
> It appears that you are only really familiar with Java, and that leads
> to a number of interesting misconceptions about OO.  Java's bizarre OO
> requires everything to be in a class, which leads many people to believe
> this is what OO should be.  In fact Java is a bit odd when it comes to
> OO, as there are many things in Java that aren't in fact objects.  For
> example, primitives are intrinsic types and are not objects.
> Furthermore class definitions are not objects either, at least from the
> programmer's pov.  You can't manipulate them by standard means as you
> can in Smalltalk and Python.  In Smalltalk and Python a "class" is an
> object just as much as an instance of a class is an object which has a
> constructor factory method that returns instance objects.  Java also has
> very strange ways of doing singleton patterns.  You have to wrap
> singletons in class and define them as "static."  I think this was
> inherited from C++.
>
> The most basic object in a python script is the module object which
> represents the namespace of the current script.  In effect a module
> object is a singleton.  It has a few attributes, and you can use it to
> look up any of the objects it contains, such as functions, objects
> (so-called variables), classes, etc.  Everything in python is an object.
>  The statement:
>
> a = 4
>
> defines an integer object "4" and binds a name to it, 'a.'  You can even
> check to see what methods the object supports by doing:
>
> >>> dir(4)
>
> ['__abs__', '__add__', '__and__', '__class__', '__cmp__', '__coerce__',
> '__delattr__', '__div__', '__divmod__', '__doc__', '__float__',
> '__floordiv__', '__getattribute__', '__getnewargs__', '__hash__',
> '__hex__', '__index__', '__init__', '__int__', '__invert__', '__long__',
> '__lshift__', '__mod__', '__mul__', '__neg__', '__new__', '__nonzero__',
> '__oct__', '__or__', '__pos__', '__pow__', '__radd__', '__rand__',
> '__rdiv__', '__rdivmod__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__',
> '__rfloordiv__', '__rlshift__', '__rmod__', '__rmul__', '__ror__',
> '__rpow__', '__rrshift__', '__rshift__', '__rsub__', '__rtruediv__',
> '__rxor__', '__setattr__', '__str__', '__sub__', '__truediv__', '__xor__']
>
> dir(a) would return the same thing.  As you can see, all the operators
> that can be performed with a number object are defined.  This little
> exercise alone should show you how much more object-oriented Python is
> than Java.
>
> Python's OO capabilities are really exposed when you start extending
> built-in types, or doing meta programming where you dynamically alter
> classes (and instance objects) on the fly.

I'm new to Python and also wondering about OOP in Python.

I want to justify the above question (is Python Object-Oriented?).
Does Python follow the concepts/practices of Encapsulation,
Polymorphism and Interface, which are quite familiar to Java
programmers?

Cheers,
Hung