many constructors in a class?

[Beth McNany]

On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 10:16 AM, climb65 <climb65 at laposte.net> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> here is a small basic question :
>
> Is it possible to have more than one constructor (__init__ function) in a
> class? For instance, to create an object with 2 different ways? If my
> memory is good, I think that with C++ it is possible.
>
> Thanks for your answer.
>
>
No, Python does not allow method overloading:

>>> class Test:
...  def __init__(self):
...    print "first init"
...  def __init__(self, arg):
...    print "init with arg"
...
>>> a = Test()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: __init__() takes exactly 2 arguments (1 given)

No error on actually writing the class, but only the last __init__ is
kept.  You could, however, emulate that behavior with optional arguments,
or something more sophisticated as the need may be.  This stackoverflow
question covers a few alternatives:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6434482/python-function-overloading
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