Bug or feature?

[Gregory A. Landrum]

Hi,

After spending an hour chasing down a problem in my code last
night, I ran across something that made me curse.  At first I thought
"Ha!  I found a bug!"  Then I thought about it a little bit more and
decided "Mabye it's a feature."  Then I thought about it a little more
and realized that I can think of no good reason for this "feature"
to exist.  Now I'm posting in hopes of obtaining enlightenment.

Here's a short section of code which demonstrates the "problem":

#----------------------------
class hasarray:
    data1 = [1,2,3];

    def __init__(self):
        self.data3 = [1,2,3];
    

if __name__=="__main__":
    obj1 = hasarray();
    obj2 = hasarray();

    print "before:";
    print "\tobj1:", obj1.data1,obj1.data3;
    print "\tobj2:", obj2.data1,obj2.data3;
                               
    obj1.data1[0] = -1;        
    obj1.data3[2] = -1;        
                               
    print "after:";            
    print "\tobj1:", obj1.data1,obj1.data3;
    print "\tobj2:", obj2.data1,obj2.data3;
#----------------------------

And here's what happens when I run it:
----------------------------
foreman ~/python python arrs.py
before:
        obj1: [1, 2, 3] [1, 2, 3]
        obj2: [1, 2, 3] [1, 2, 3]
after:
        obj1: [-1, 2, 3] [1, 2, -1]
        obj2: [-1, 2, 3] [1, 2, 3]
----------------------------

So, if I initialize an array variable within the "class scope" (for
want of knowing the proper word) by simple assignment, this same array
is shared between *all* instances of the class.  If I do the same 
initialization within a class method (like __init__), then each
instance has its own copy of the array.  I like the second case much
better... having the array shared between all instances just strikes
me as wrong.

If this behavior is indeed what is intended, I'm really curious to
know why.  Why is this confusing (to me at least) behavior considered
desirable? 

In case this is actually a bug (I don't think it's likely... this
seems like a design decision), I've reproduced the behavior on:
v1.5.1 under AIX 4.2 and linux (2.0.36)
v1.5.2 under Win95

Thanks in advance for any clues!

-greg

---------------------
Dr. Greg Landrum  (landrumSPAM at foreman.ac.rwth-aachen.de)
Institute of Inorganic Chemistry
Aachen University of Technology
Prof.-Pirlet-Str. 1, D-52074 Aachen, Germany