[BangPypers] wierd class behavior

[Satyajit Ranjeev]

You are right in mentioning scopes. 

Lets take case 2:

def f():
   x = 1		# x is pointing to object 1

   class Foo:
       print(x)		# what you are doing is printing object 1
       x = x + 1	# you are defining x in the class's scope and pointing it to the object 2
       print(x)		# printing out the x in the class's scope

   print(x)		# gives 1 as that's the object x is pointing in f()'s scope
   print(Foo.x)		# gives 2 - the object x is pointing in Foo's scope

f()


Take case 3:
def g():
   y = 1		
   class Foo:
       y = 2		
       def gety(self):
           return y	
   foo = Foo()		
   print(y, foo.y, foo.gety())
   # when you print y it prints the y in g()'s scope.
   # when you print foo.y, you print y defined in Foo's scope.
   # foo.gety() does not return Foo.y rather the y defined earlier in the 
   # method. 
   # If you print locals() in gety() you will get something similar to :
   # {'y': 1, 'self': <__main__.Foo instance at 0x10c8041b8>, 'Foo': <class __main__.Foo at 0x10c822bb0>}
   # so what happens is that you are still accessing y of the functions scope.
   # If you had returned self.y or a Foo.y it would have been different.

g()

I don't think the first two cases are weird. But yes, case 3 does seem a bit weird especially while returning y in the method call.

On 04-Dec-2012, at 9:42 AM, Anand Chitipothu <anandology at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 9:38 AM, Satyajit Ranjeev
> <satyajit.ranjeev at gmail.com> wrote:
>> It is the way Python handles objects. Unlike variables in C/C++ where a variable can point to an address location in the memory Python uses variables to point to an object.
>> 
>> Now in the first case what you are doing is pointing x to the object 1 in x=1.
>> When you print x it just prints 1. When you try to assign x to x+1 you are pointing x in the class's scope to a new object which is x + 1 or 2. And that's why you get the weird results.
> 
> Well, *the class scope* is quite different from function scope.
> 
> The same code that works in a class, fails in a function.
> 
> x = 1
> 
> class Foo:
>    x = x + 1
> 
> def f():
>    x = x + 1
> 
>> 
>> The other cases can be expanded on the same basis.
> 
> Did you try the other ones?
> 
> Anand
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