On Wed, Apr 06, 2022 at 02:47:57AM +1200, Greg Ewing wrote:
I think you misunderstand the reason why super() accepts a class argument.
It's purely for historical reasons.
No, it is because it actually does need to know which class it is being called from, as well as the object that originated the call.
Originally super() couldn't tell on its own which class it was being called from, and had to be told.
And it still does. The only difference is that now, in Python 3, the interpreter is able to automatically tell it. It does that by giving methods a special cell variable called "__class__" that references the class they belong to. See PEP 3135. https://peps.python.org/pep-3135/
It's only there now for backwards compatibility.
No, sometimes you still have to explicitly pass the arguments yourself, if the interpreter can't work it out.
It's not intended for picking and choosing which class to target -- that's what explicit class.method calls are for.
I agree with that, but as always, if you know what you are doing, you can use a tool for a completely unexpected purpose. If you know what you are doing. -- Steve