Create an alias to an attribute on superclass

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, Feb 2, 2018 at 5:22 AM, Sean DiZazzo <sean.dizazzo at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I basically just want to create an alias to an attribute on an item's superclass.  So that after I create the subclass object, I can access the alias attribute to get the value back.
>
> <pre>
> class Superclass(object):
>     def __init__(self, value):
>         """
>             I want to pass x by reference, so that any time
>             x on the subclass is updated, so is the alias here
>         """
>         self.alias = value
>
> class Subclass(Superclass):
>     def __init__(self, x):
>         self.x = x
>         Superclass.__init__(self, self.x)
>
>     def __repr__(self):
>         return "x: %s\nalias: %s" % (self.x, self.alias)
>
>
> if __name__ == "__main__":
>     foo = Subclass(1)
>     print foo.alias
>
>     foo.x = 6
>     # Should return 6 !!!
>     print foo.alias
>
> </pre>

ISTM the easiest way would be to define a property on the superclass:

class Superclass(object):
    @property
    def alias(self):
        return self.x

Whatever happens, self.alias will be identical to self.x. Is that what
you're after?

ChrisA