Does underscore has any special built-in meaningin Python ?

[Benjamin Kaplan]

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 1:59 PM, dandi kain <dandi.kain at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello everybody,
> I have just started learning Python.I heard its simple so I pick a
> presentation [1] and tried to work on it.But when it comes to
> underscores leading and trailing an object I dont understand any.I
> look through the python manual also but that was not helping .I
> searched some forums and I still dont have a clear picture.
>
> What is the functionality of __ or _ , leading or trailing an object ,
> class ot function ? Is it just a naming convention to note special
> functions and objects , or it really mean someting to Python ?

It's just a convention for the most part. A single leading underscore
is used for "private" attributes. Two leading underscores will affect
the code- it mangles the variable name so that you don't have to worry
about the value being overwritten by a subclass. For instance
"""
class Foo(object) :
   def __init__(self) :
       self.__bar = ''

foo = Foo()
""
will store the attribute as foo._Foo__bar.

Also, the "magic methods"- the ones that are used for operations and
built-in stuff, all have two leading and two trailing underscores.
These are things like __add__ (+), __eq__ (=), __cmp__ (old way for
comparisons), __len__ (len), __str__ (str), and so on.


>
> Thanks ahead ,
>
> [1] http://www.aleax.it/goo_py4prog.pdf
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