general class functions

[Dan Perl]

"syd" <syd.diamond at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:a76ba315.0411030822.7e48d308 at posting.google.com...
> Andrea Griffini <agriff at tin.it> wrote in message
>
>> Would it be worse or better to make Library a new-style
>> class, using __getattribute__ instead of __getattr__ and
>> defaulting to object.__getattribute__(self,name) in the
>> "else" part ?
>
> Can you elaborate here, please?  I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

__getattr__ existed since "classic" classes.  It is only called if the 
regular way of searching for the attribute doesn't find it (it's not in 
self.__dict__).  __getattribute__ was introduced with new style classes and 
it is called for *all* attribute references.  In your case at least, you can 
either implement the __getattr__ hook or override the __getattribute__ 
method with pretty much the same results.  I see a use in overriding 
__getattribute__ if you want to change the behavior for all the attributes, 
but you are interested only in "get_*" methods.

Again, see http://www.python.org/2.2.1/descrintro.html for more (I was 
actually loosely quoting from there in my explanation).

I can't say though whether it would be worse or better.  I'm also curious to 
hear opinions on that.

Dan