OK, I thought I had this one fixed but it was weirder than I thought.
I think I understand what's going on, but I wanted to check with the
experts here.
I have the following class definition, which does not subclass anything:
class oneStim:
def __init__(self, time, mods=[], dur=None, format='%1.2f'):
self.time=time
self.mods=mods
self.dur=dur
self.format=format
def __cmp__(self,other):
return cmp(self.time,other.time)
def __repr__(self):
timestr=self.format % self.time
if self.mods == []:
modstr=''
else:
modstr = '*' + ','.join(self.format % i for i in self.mods)
if self.dur == None:
durstr = ''
else:
durstr = ':' + (self.format % self.dur)
return timestr + modstr + durstr
def __len__(self):
return len(self.__repr__())
>>> a=oneStim(40)
>>> a
40.00
>>> a.mods.append(3)
>>> a
40.00*3.00
>>> a.dur=10
>>> a
40.00*3.00:10.00
>>> a.mods.append(1)
>>> a
40.00*3.00,1.00:10.00
So far so good, that's exactly what it's supposed to do. But now look:
>>> b=oneStim(50)
>>> b
50.00*3.00,1.00
The mods that were added to the first instance of oneStim also appear
in the second, newly created instance!
It appears that what is happening here is that the __init__() method
is being parsed by the interpreter once at initial run, and at that
time the statement "mods=[]" is being parsed, which means that the []
object is being instantiated once there at the beginning. So every
instantiation of class oneStim ends up sharing a reference to the same
list object, instead of each one having its own.
I fixed this by changing it to "mods=None" and then setting it in the
body of the __init__ method. Works fine now.
My question is, is this just a quirky misbehavior, or is there a
principled reason why the code I have shown above only instantiates
the empty list in the arguments once?
Thanks for any insight. As I said, I got it to work fine now, so this
isn't critical, but I'm curious to understand why things work the way
they do. :)
--
-dave----------------------------------------------------------------
"Pseudo-colored pictures of a person's brain lighting up are
undoubtedly more persuasive than a pattern of squiggles produced by a
polygraph. That could be a big problem if the goal is to get to the
truth." -Dr. Steven Hyman, Harvard
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