Gabriel Rossetti a écrit :
Larry Bates wrote:
Gabriel Rossetti wrote:
Hello everyone,

I had read somewhere that it is preferred to use self.__class__.attribute over ClassName.attribute to access class (aka static) attributes. I had done this and it seamed to work, until I subclassed a class using this technique and from there on things started screwing up. I finally tracked it down to self.__class__.attribute! What was happening is that the child classes each over-rode the class attribute at their level, and the parent's was never set, so while I was thinking that I had indeed a class attribute set in the parent, it was the child's that was set, and every child had it's own instance! Since it was a locking mechanism, lots of fun to debug... So, I suggest never using self.__class__.attribute, unless you don't mind it's children overriding it, but if you want a truly top-level class attribute, use ClassName.attribute everywhere!

I wish books and tutorials mentioned this explicitly....

Gabriel

If you define a class instance variable with the same name as the class attribute, how would Python be able to distinguish the two? That is a feature not a problem. Getter looks for instance attribute, if one is not found it looks for a class attribute, and upwards. This behavior is used by Zope to do all sorts of neat stuff.

-Larry Bates
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A class instance variable, you must mean an instance attribute no?

I think that's what he meant, yes.

If that is so, then with just self.attribute? Maybe there is a concept that I don't know about,

The concept of name resolution (aka lookup) rules in Python, perhaps ? When you do obj.attribute, attribute is first looked for in the object, then in it's class, then in the parent classes. So yes, you can get a class (or parent class) attribute directly on the instance. Note that assignment on the instance (obj.attribute = value) will alway (computed attributes or other hooks excepted) create the attribute on the target, so if you have Class.attribute set, and then do obj = Class(); obj.attribute = 42, then obj.attribute will shadow Class.attribute.

I've studied class/static attributes and instance attributes in my OOP classes.

Forget about your OOP classes, mostly if it was in fact a Java or C++ class. Python's object model is very far away from what most courses present as "OOP".

Gabriel
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