Dynamic class construction?

[David C. Ullrich]

    Say I want to make a function that returns a new _class_.
I can do this:

def NewClass(whatever):
    class new(baseClass):
        pass
    new.SomeAttribute = whatever.whatever
    return new

and it seems to do the job. Is there another way to
do this that seems much better for some reason?

    I guess a related question would be whether
having distinct classes with the same __name__
is going to be trouble - does __name__ get used
in significant ways internally or is it just there
for the programmer's convenience?

DU

    (In case someone feels the answer might depend
on the context: it's mathematical structures. For
example baseClass might be Group; a subclass
of Group "is" a group, and an instance of the
subclass "is" an element of the group. So I might
want to create a group using

def NewGroup(groupOp):
    class new(Group):
        pass
    new.__mul__ = groupOp
    return new

so then

G = NewGroup(SomeGroupOp)
g1 = G(someparams)

makes g1 an element of the group G.)