use member functions to access data in Python classes?

[Gerhard Häring]

beliavsky at aol.com wrote:
> In C++, it is generally recommended to declare the data within a class
> private and to access the data using member functions. Do experienced
> Python programmers usually use member functions to access data within
> classes, or do they access the data directly?

Either directly, or guarded with properties (2.2+).

Older Python versions don't have properties, but you can emulate them by 
overriding __getattr__ and __setattr__ appropriately.

-- Gerhard