constructin trees in python

[Maxim Mercury]

On Nov 20, 2:03 pm, Peter Otten <__pete... at web.de> wrote:
> Maxim Mercury wrote:
> > here is the definintion of htmlelement
>
> > class HTMLElement:
> >     tag=None
> >     attrs={}
> >     data=''
> >     childs=[]
>
> > the issue is the though new elements are pushed in the stack (1),
> > whenever i append the child to the stack top all other elements in the
> > stack is getting affected, i assume the same reference is used but is
> > there a way to overcome this ?
>
> In
>
> class A:
>    some_list = []
>
> defines a class attribute shared by all instances of A. To turn some_list
> into an instance attribute move the definition into the initializer:
>
> class A:
>     def __init__(self):
>         self.some_list = []
>
> Note that this holds for every attribute, but you usually see it only for
> mutables like lists or dicts because in
>
> class A:
>    x = "yadda"
>    y = []
> a = A()
> print a.x # yadda
> a.x = 42
> print a.x # 42
> del a.x
> print a.x # can you guess what happens?
>
> the class attribute is shadowed by the instance attribute whereas
>
> a.y.append(42)
>
> modifies the class attribute in place.
>
> # two more to check that you've understood the mechanism:
> a.y += ["ham"] # ?
> a.y = ["spam"] # ?
>
> Peter

Thanks a lot peter, that worked as i needed. Where can i find some
good documentation which explains such behavior.