Accessing container's methods

[Tony van der Hoff]

Hi,

I have a class A, containing embedded embedded classes, which need to 
access methods from A.
.
A highly contrived example, where I'm setting up an outer class in a 
Has-a relationship, containing a number of Actors. The inner class needs 
to access a method of the outer class; here the method get_name.

I don't really want to make Actor a sub-class (is-a; it isn't) of Monty; 
that would raise all sorts of other problems.

Can anyone please advise me on how to achieve this magic?

# define the outer class
class Monty:
   def __init__( self, names ):
     self.actors = []

     i = 0
     for n in names:
       self.actors.append( Actor( n, i ) )
       i += 1	# here is a case for python supporting post-increment!

   def count_actors( self ):
     return len( self.actors )

   def list_actors( self ):
     h=[]
     for n in self.actors:
       h.append( n.get_name() )
     return h

# define the inner class
class Actor:
   def __init__ ( self, name, id ):
     self.name = name
     self.id = id

   def get_name( self ):

     # and here lies the problem;
     # AttributeError: Actor instance has no attribute 'count_actors'
     # how do I access the method in the enclosing class
     txt = "I'm Actor {} Number {} of {}".\
              format(  self.name, self.id, self.count_actors() )

     # this works, of course
     #txt = "I'm Actor \"{}\"; Number {}.  ".\
		format( self.name, self.id )

     return txt

if __name__ == '__main__':
   o = Monty( ["Cleese", "Idle", "Palin" ] )
   print "number: ",o.count_actors()
   a = o.list_actors()
   for l in a:
     print l

Thanks, Tony