Newbie: Why doesn't this work

[ct60 at aol.com]

Thanks you Gabriel and Timm for your thoughtful responses.  I am very
appreciative.

I had heard about the properties function, but wanted to understand
the old syntax first before I tried that.  Thanks to your responses, I
was able to see what the problem was.

Here is a solution I came up with:

class Person():
    def __init__(self, fName="", lName=""):
        self.__fName = fName
        self.__lName = lName

    def __getattr__(self, attr):
        if attr == "name":
            return self.__fName + " " + self.__lName
        else:
            return self.__dict__[attr]

    def __setattr__(self, attr, value):
        # this assumes that value is a tuple of first and last name
        if attr == "name":
            self.__fName, self.__lName = value
        else:
            self.__dict__[attr] = value


P = Person("Joe", "Smith")

print P.name

P.name = ("Jane", "Doe")

print P.name

This works as expected printing "Joe Smith" and then "Jane Doe".

To be honest, I think the above old syle (I guess) method is pretty
cool and elegant.

Thanks again and have a GREAT NEW YEAR!!

Chris (ct60 at aol.com)