[Tutor] static methods and class methods

[Kent Johnson]

On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 12:17 AM, Christopher Spears
<cspears2002 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>> tcm.foo
> <bound method classobj.foo of <class __main__.TestClassMethod at 0xb7da0f2c>>
>>>>
>
> According to the author, the result for typing in 'tcm.foo' is
>
> calling class method foo()
> foo() is part of class: TestClassMethod

Try tcm.foo()

tcm.foo without parentheses is the classmethod itself. You need
parentheses to actually call it.

> Did I do something wrong or is this an error on the book's part?  Intuitively, the answer I received makes more sense to me.  I am still unsure of the difference of static and class methods.  Can someone enlighten me?

A class method receives the class it was called on as the first
argument. This can be useful with subclasses. A staticmethod doesn't
get a a class or instance argument. It is just a way to put a plain
function into the scope of a class.

Both of these are rarely used; I don't think I have ever written a
class method in live code. I have used staticmethods as a convenient
way to put a function into a class namespace.

Kent