Guido van Rossum <guido@python.org>:
def __str__(self): pass
Dunno about other people's opinions, but I have a strong distaste for creating methods whose body contains pass. I always use "raise NotImplementedError".
But that has different semantics!
In this particular case, the program blows up anyway if this method is ever called, so you might as well return a meaningful exception! Python 2.2 (#14, May 28 2002, 14:11:27) [GCC 2.95.2 19991024 (release)] on sunos5 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
class C: ... def __str__(self): ... pass ... c = C() str(c) Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? TypeError: __str__ returned non-string (type NoneType)
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, +--------------------------------------+ University of Canterbury, | A citizen of NewZealandCorp, a | Christchurch, New Zealand | wholly-owned subsidiary of USA Inc. | greg@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz +--------------------------------------+