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

[Philippe C. Martin]

Well I _was_ a bit slow on that one !

So I will happily stick to the double underscore.

Regards,

Philippe



Le mardi 25 janvier 2005 à 10:28 +0000, Simon Brunning a écrit :
> On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 12:17:13 -0600, Philippe C. Martin
> <philippecmartin at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> > 
> > I use "__"for private variables because I must have read on net it was
> > the way to do so - yet this seems to have changed - thanks:
> > 
> > http://www.network-theory.co.uk/docs/pytut/tut_77.html
> 
> Nope, that's still the right way to make a member 'really' private.
> Stephen was pointing out a very common Python idiom - "private by
> convention", and suggesting that using it would be more appropriate.
> 
> A member with a single preceding underscore is private by convention.
> That is to say, there is no mechanism in place to prevent clients of
> the class accessing these members, but they should consider themselves
> to have been warned that they do so at their own risk.
> 
> If you take the back off the radio, the warranty is void. ;-)
> 
> I (and by inference Stephen) feel that this is a more "Pythonic"
> approach. Give the programmer the information that they need, but
> don't try to stop them from doing what they need to do.
> 
-- 
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Philippe C. Martin
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