Dave Angel <da...@davea.name> wrote: > The decorator function will execute while *compiling* the class A, and > the one in class B is unreferenced.
No, the decorator function is called when *executing* the class body of A. Compilation could have happened weeks earlier. It really does make it a lot easier to understand this sort of issue if you remember that 'class' and 'def' are simply executable statements: the body of 'class' executes as part of the class definition whenever normal execution reaches the 'class' statement, the body of 'def' doesn't execute until the function is called (but default arguments are evaluated when the 'def' is executed). In both cases however the code is fully compiled whenever the module is compiled: that could be when the module is imported or if it is __main__ when the script executes, but after the first run of the program all of the modules (nto the script) will have been compiled once and don't compile again until the source changes. -- Duncan Booth http://kupuguy.blogspot.com -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list