Access from a class attribute

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Kless a écrit :
> Why can not to access from a class attribute to a function of that
> class?
> 
> -----------------
> class Foo(object):
>    attr = __class__.__name__
>    attr = self.__class__.__name__
> -----------------


"class" is an executable statement that instanciate a new class object 
and bind it to the class name in the current namespace. The class object 
doesn't yet exists when the body of the class statement is eval'd, so 
you can't access it, obviously - nor any of it's instances FWIW.

Also, there's nothing magical wrt/ 'self' - it's just a naming 
convention for the "current instance" argument of functions that are 
intented to be used as methods (Python's 'methods' being just thin 
wrappers around the function, the class and the instance).

If you want to mess with the class attributes, you can either do so 
after the class is created (that is, after the end of the class 
statement's body), or use a custom metaclass.