How to build Hierarchies of dict's? (Prototypes in Python?)

[Charles D Hixson]

Toby wrote:
> Charles D Hixson wrote:
>   
>> a class whose sub-classes automatically have unique class variables of
>> a determined form such that I can do a hierarchical search through them
>>     
>
> Something like this?  
> (scroll down to see the results)
>
>
> # --- begin ---
>
> class AttrSearch(object):
>   @classmethod
>   def getclassattrset(cls, name):
>     s = set()
>     if name in cls.__dict__:
>       s.add((cls.__name__, cls.__dict__[name]))
>     for base in cls.__bases__:
>       try:
>         s.update(base.getclassattrset(name))
>       except AttributeError:
>         pass
>     return s
>
>   def getattrset(self, name):
>     s = set()
>     try:
>       s.add((None, self.__dict__[name]))
>     except KeyError:
>       pass
>     s.update(self.__class__.getclassattrset(name))
>     return s
>
>   def __getattribute__(self, name):
>     if name.startswith('__'): #XXX not pretty
>       return object.__getattribute__(self, name)
>     found = AttrSearch.getattrset(self, name)
>     print 'Looking for "%s" in a %s instance, found %d candidates:' \
>           % (name, self.__class__.__name__, len(found))
>     print '\n'.join([ '  %-4s %s' % x for x in found ])
>     print '(now choose wisely what to return)'
>
> class A(AttrSearch):
>   a = 1
>
> class B(A):
>   a = 2
>
> class C(A):
>   a = 3
>
> class D(B, C):
>   a = 4
>
>
> D().a
>
> # --- end ---
>
>
> Results:
>
> Looking for "a" in a D instance, found 4 candidates:
>   A    1
>   B    2
>   C    3
>   D    4
> (now choose wisely what to return)
>
>
> Toby
>   
Yes, thank you.
(I'd come up with a kludge, but this is much nicer.)