str class inheritance prob?

[jkazoo at gmail.com]

so I’m trying to create a class that inherits from str, but I want to
run some code on the value on object init.  this is what I have:


class Path(str):
            def __init__( self, path ):
                        clean = str(path).replace('\\','/')
                        while clean.find('//') != -1:
                                    clean = clean.replace('//','/')

                        print 'cleaned on init:\t',clean
                        self = clean


so clearly the clean variable is what I want value of the string to
be, but that’s decidedly not the case.  so running this:

a=Path('path///with\\nasty/////crap_in_it/')
print a


gives me this:

cleaned on init:  path/with/nasty/crap_in_it/
path///with\nasty/////crap_in_it/


what gives?  what am I doing wrong, and can I do what I’m trying to
here?
thanks.