Pronouncing '__init__'

Peter Hansen peter at engcorp.com
Mon Jun 17 21:16:31 EDT 2002


Oren Tirosh wrote:
> 
> There has been a thread about this issue in the past. Below are some of the
> proposals people made.  I'd like to have an informal vote - how do *you*
> say Python's magic names when talking with other Pythoneers?
> 
>  (all my Python-related communication is written)
>  double underscore init double underscore
>  under under init under under
>  double bar init double bar
>  bar bar init bar bar
>  unders init unders
>  under init under
>  bar init bar
>  magic init
>  pyinit
> 
> Most of these pronounciations also have a shorter version with the trailing
> part omitted.

I believe, and I'm not going to take the few seconds to check right now :-),
that the documentation refers to __init__ and friends as "special methods",
so I always just say "the init special method" or "the getitem special method"
if there's any possible confusion, and just "init" or "getitem" without
trouble in all other cases.

Rarely I have to haul out "double underscore X double underscore" but
that's usually no more than once per person... after that the above
techniques usually work.

-Peter



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