What is the difference between init and enter?

[Ken Seehart]

Diez B. Roggisch wrote:
> John wrote:
>
>   
>> I'm okay with init, but it seems to me that enter is redundant since it
>> appears that anything you want to execute in enter can be done in init.
>>     
>
> About what are you talking? 
>
> Diez
>   
Presumably, the 'with' statement.  http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0343/

    *__enter__*(self)

    Enter the runtime context related to this object. The *with*
    <http://effbot.org/pyref/with.htm> statement will bind this method's
    return value to the target(s) specified in the *as*
    <http://effbot.org/pyref/as.htm> clause of the statement, if any.


Unlike __init__,  __enter__ can return a value, which is assigned to the 
variable (or tuple) following the 'as' keyword:

        with EXPR as VAR:
            BLOCK

Also, the object used in a with statement can be constructed prior to 
the with statement.  The __init__ method is called when the object is 
initialized, but the __enter__ method is called when the context is 
entered (i.e. when the 'with' statement is invoked).

Ken

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