[Python-Dev] Re: __slots__ and default values

[Thomas Heller]

Michael Chermside <mcherm@mcherm.com> writes:

> Combine this with the fact that newbies from staticly typed 
> languages tend to think of __slots__ as "practically mandatory" 
> (because it prevents the use of instance variables not pre-declared,
> which they erroniously think is a good thing) rather than the 
> special purpose performance hack that it REALLY is, and you have
> a recipe for trouble.

Unrelated to *this* topic, but Andrew's "What's new in Python 2.2" still
presents __slots__ as a way to constrain the instance variables:

  A new-style class can define a class attribute named __slots__ to
  constrain the list of legal attribute names.

http://www.python.org/doc/current/whatsnew/sect-rellinks.html#SECTION000340000000000000000

This should probably be fixed.

Thomas