Style question: metaclass self vs cls?

Steven D'Aprano steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info
Mon Jul 16 11:29:59 EDT 2012


Here's a style question for you: in a metaclass, what should I call the 
instance parameter of methods, "cls" or "self"?

class ExampleMeta(type):
    def method(self, *args): ...

I'm not quite sure if that feels right. On the one hand, self is the 
ExampleMeta instance alright... but on the other, self is actually a 
class, so I feel I want to call it "cls" rather than "self", which makes 
it more obvious that you're looking at a metaclass.

On the third-hand, it may be confusing that the argument is called "cls" 
but not decorated with classdecorator.

I'm very slightly leaning towards writing metaclasses like this:

class ExampleMeta(type):
    def __new__(meta, *args): ...
    def method(cls, *args): ...

class Example(metaclass=ExampleMeta):
    def another_method(self): ...


What do others do?



-- 
Steven



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