Brian Munroe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Ok, so thanks everyone for the helpful hints. That *was* a typo on my > part (should've been super(B...) not super(A..), but I digress) > > I'm building a public API. Along with the API I have a few custom > types that I'm expecting API users to extend, if they need too. If I > don't use name mangling, isn't that considered bad practice (read not > defensive programming) to not protect those 'private' fields?
The problem is that you are using name mangling for an attribute which is accessed by several generations of a class hierarchy. Name mangling is only useful for attributes you *don't* want to share with subclasses (or bases). In python, use attributes starting with a single underscore (such as _name). It tells users that they shouldn't mess with them. By design, python doesn't include mechanisms equivalent to the Java / C++ 'private'. -- Arnaud -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
