[Tutor] Properties

[Kent Johnson]

Greg Lindstrom wrote:
> Hello, and I apologize in advance for the question.

No apologies needed, this list would be quite boring without any 
questions :-)
> 
> I have decided to publish a class I use to handle data segments to 
> Google Code for the world to see (I plan to make millions off training 
> classes, books and lectures :-).  I need to make it a bit more 'generic' 
> than the class I have been using, and while I'm working the rewrite I 
> thought it would be cool to add unit tests and use properties.  The 
> problem is, I only recall that properties are 'cool'.  I can't locate 
> the documentation on why or how to use them.  If you could point me to 
> the proper documentation I would be most appreciative.

Hmmm...if that is all you can remember about properties, then maybe you 
don't need them, many programs don't...even cool programs :-)

I don't know of any good introductory material on properties but here 
are some starting points:
http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.2/descrintro/#property
http://docs.python.org/lib/built-in-funcs.html#l2h-57

> Also, I plan to use unittest to write my unit tests.  Is this module 
> still considered acceptable, or has something else taken it's place?

unittest is fine. There are a few other unit test frameworks that are 
also popular but unittest and doctest are the only ones in the standard 
library.

Kent