"Super()" confusion

[Paul Boddie]

On 10 Feb, 20:45, Jean-Paul Calderone <exar... at divmod.com> wrote:
>
> It replaces one kind of repetition with another.  I think each kind is
> about as unpleasant.  Has anyone gathered any data on the frequency of
> changes of base classes as compared to the frequency of classes being
> renamed?  I don't think either happens very often, but it might be
> interesting to see some numbers.

Base class changes are less important than common derived class
functionality. For example, I have employed the following style of
class hierarchy in at least one system:

class ResourceUsingClass:

    """
    Stuff using some resource, like a file.
    Should we close the file when we're finished with it?
    Is that rude? Best not do it!
    """

    def close(self):
        pass # Don't close anything!

class SelfContainedResourceUsingClass(ResourceUsingClass):

    """
    We don't care about keeping the resource open in this class.
    The user of the class should just need to call the close method.
    """

    def close(self):
        ResourceUsingClass.close(self)
        # Now close the resource!

I know that there would be other ways of solving this problem, but in
this case, for every class we want to subclass and provide such
functionality, we need to write a specific close method. With super,
we can avoid being specific about the superclass, but we still need to
write the method unless we define it in a mix-in which appears before
the superclass in the method resolution order.

I think this is the only real use I've found for super, mostly
because, as you say, in most other situations it doesn't actually save
anyone very much effort.

Paul