"private" variables a.k.a. name mangling (WAS: What is print? A function?)

[Steven Bethard]

Philippe C. Martin wrote:
 > class Debug_Stderr:
 >   __m_text = ''
 >   __m_log_text = None
 >   __m_dbg = None
 >   __m_refresh_count = 0

<rant>

I don't see the benefit in 99.9% of cases for making class variables 
like this "private".  If you don't want people to use them, simply use 
the standard convention[1] for non-public variables:

class Debug_Stderr:
     _text = ''
     _log_text = None
     _dbg = None
     _refresh_count = 0

A lot of the time, it actually makes sense to make (at least some of) 
the attributes public, e.g.:

class Debug_Stderr:
     text = ''
     log_text = None
     dbg = None
     refresh_count = 0

I don't know what all the variables in this specific example are 
intended to be, but it certainly seems like something like 
'refresh_count' might be useful to clients of the class.

Name mangling is there to keep you from accidentally hiding such an 
attribute in a subclass, but how often is this really a danger?  Can 
someone give me an example of where __-mangling really solved a problem 
for them, where a simple leading underscore wouldn't have solved the 
same problem?

</rant>

Steve

[1] http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0008.html