> I've written a class, with some methods. I then want to be able to call > the class repeatedly, to create some objects. The number of objects, and > some of their initialisation parameters need to be specified later (i.e. > at run-time).
Not quite sure what you mean by the last bit but I'll come back to that... > When I generate all these objects, how do I keep track of them. Check out the OOP topic in my tutor, it discusses this within the context of a bank account example - how to manage large numbers of account holders. The short answer is put them in a list or dictionary. > but this is obviously not scaleable. If I use a list, I can do: > ... > but then I have to search the list (MyObjects) for the object where > Object.name="a". > > The only other option seems to be finding objects via their hash codes, > which I'm sure isn't right Why not? After all Python uses dictionaries(hashes) for all of its variables, and every object is an instance of a dictionary which holds all the attributes... This is exactly the kind of thing hashes are for. As for using different initialisation parameters. Do you mean different types of values or just different values? If the former - like Java/C++ having multiple constructors - then the best approach is to use named parameters - look at how Tkinter does this as a good example. class C: def __init__(self, a=None, b=None, c=None, d=None) # do stuff here now provided you can think up some suitable default values you can init your object with any combination of a,b,c and d you like like this: c1 = C(a="fred",d=42) c2 = C(b=27,d=0) c3 = C(a="joe", c=[1,2,3]) and so on... I'm not sure if thats what you wanted but if not post again to clarify... Alan G Author of the Learn to Program web tutor http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
