[Tutor] q about method(self)
Erik Price
erikprice@mac.com
Sat, 31 Aug 2002 10:45:19 -0400
A class method generally takes "self" as its first argument. I had
been wondering for some time why this is, since it seems redundant if
it's there for all class methods. But I just realized -- you can call
an object's method without using dot notation in Python, like this:
method(instance_reference, args)
rather than only like this:
instance_reference.method(args)
I didn't realize that until just now. But what I'm wondering is,
why/when would you want to use this form? Is it just an aesthetic
thing, or is it something that is required b/c of the way that Python
handles user-defined classes and objects? Or something else?
One other quickie question -- not that I would ever need to do this,
but could a different identifier other than "self" ever be used? (such
as "this") It -appears- that "self" is just a reference within a
class, but perhaps there's magic going on that I don't know about.
Thanks,
Erik
--
Erik Price
email: erikprice@mac.com
jabber: erikprice@jabber.org