[Tutor] Classes, methods and self

[Bob Gailer]

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At 10:18 AM 8/1/2003 -0500, Justin Heath wrote:

>I am going through some various class documentation (Learning to Program 
>and Learning Python) and I cannot seem to understand why self is needed in 
>a method declaration. I "believe" that I understand what self does (i.e. 
>connects itself to the current object instance). However, what I do not 
>understand is why you have to explicitly declare self in the argument list 
>of a method. I hope that was clear. Can anyone clarify this for me?

class A:
   def foo(self,arg):
     print arg

a = A()
a.foo(3)

Python converts a.foo(3) into A.foo(a, 3), thus passing the instance as the 
first argument to the class method foo.

Bob Gailer
bgailer@alum.rpi.edu
303 442 2625

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