Copy constructors

[Joal Heagney]

Alex Martelli wrote:
> 
> "David Smith" <drs at labs.agilent.com> wrote in message
> news:3B72DCBA.C99465BC at labs.agilent.com...
>     ...
> > class I have at hand, __init__ does some real work, which I want to
> > bypass -- I want to clone the results of that work.  I don't want to
>     ...
> > Is there a way for __copy__ to create a bare object of the same class,
> > which it can proceed to populate?
> 
> Piece of cake:
> 
> class Fleep:
>     def __init__(self, x, y, z):
>         print 'lots',x,'of',y,'work',z
>     def __copy__(self):
>         class Temp: pass
>         newbie = Temp()
>         newbie.__class__=self.__class__
>         print "very little work"
> 
> Alex

And adding onto that an automatic copy of the instance's __dict__ -->

>>> import copy
>>> class Fleep:
...	def __init__(self,x,y,z):
...		print 'lots',x,'of',y,'work',z
...		self.x = x
...		self.y = y
...		self.z = z
...	def __copy__(self):
...		class Temp: pass
...		newbie = Temp()
...		newbie.__class__ = self.__class__
...		newbie.__dict__ = copy.deepcopy(self.__dict__)
...		print "very little work"
...		return newbie

I LOVE this language. Alex, you're empty class trick just made it into
my private python scrap-book.
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !