[Tutor] Underscores

[Sean 'Shaleh' Perry]

On 19-Mar-2002 shendric@arches.uga.edu wrote:
> Greetings all,
> 
> This is probably a really boring question, but I've been looking at some 
> code and there are a number of cases where the method name is prefixed 
> with and underscore (self._hull, etc.).  Now, I understand the use of 
> the underscore in __init__, but does the underscore like that above 
> serve a purpose?  In that particular code, I can't find a function that 
> is defined as _hull.  Just to be clear, this code is used to configure a 
> MegaWidget in Tkinter, and I know that hull is an option for a 
> MegaWidget, but I've never seen _hull.
> 

a leading underscore says 'I am private, leave me alone'.  It is analogous to
placing the variable in the private section of a C++ or Java class definition,
although in python the privateness is a convention and only loosely enforced.