sharing a string between two objects - python

I want two objects to share a single string object. How do I pass the string object from the first to the second such that any changes applied by one will be visible to the other? I am guessing that I would have to wrap the string in a sort of buffer object and do all sorts of complexity to get it to work.
However, I have a tendency to overthink problems, so undoubtedly there is an easier way. Or maybe sharing the string is the wrong way to go? Keep in mind that I want both objects to be able to edit the string. Any ideas?
Here is an example of a solution I could use:
class Buffer(object):
def __init__(self):
self.data = ""
def assign(self, value):
self.data = str(value)
def __getattr__(self, name):
return getattr(self.data, name)
class Descriptor(object):
def __get__(self, instance, owner):
return instance._buffer.data
def __set__(self, instance, value):
if not hasattr(instance, "_buffer"):
if isinstance(value, Buffer):
instance._buffer = value
return
instance._buffer = Buffer()
instance._buffer.assign(value)
class First(object):
data = Descriptor()
def __init__(self, data):
self.data = data
def read(self, size=-1):
if size < 0:
size = len(self.data)
data = self.data[:size]
self.data = self.data[size:]
return data
class Second(object):
data = Descriptor()
def __init__(self, data):
self.data = data
def add(self, newdata):
self.data += newdata
def reset(self):
self.data = ""
def spawn(self):
return First(self._buffer)
s = Second("stuff")
f = s.spawn()
f.data == s.data
#True
f.read(2)
#"st"
f.data
# "uff"
f.data == s.data
#True
s.data
#"uff"
s._buffer == f._buffer
#True
Again, this seems like absolute overkill for what seems like a simple problem. As well, it requires the use of the Buffer class, a descriptor, and the descriptor's impositional _buffer variable.
An alternative is to put one of the objects in charge of the string and then have it expose an interface for making changes to the string. Simpler, but not quite the same effect.

I want two objects to share a single
string object.
They will, if you simply pass the string -- Python doesn't copy unless you tell it to copy.
How do I pass the string object from
the first to the second such that any
changes applied by one will be visible
to the other?
There can never be any change made to a string object (it's immutable!), so your requirement is trivially met (since a false precondition implies anything).
I am guessing that I would have to
wrap the string in a sort of buffer
object and do all sorts of complexity
to get it to work.
You could use (assuming this is Python 2 and you want a string of bytes) an array.array with a typecode of c. Arrays are mutable, so you can indeed alter them (with mutating methods -- and some operators, which are a special case of methods since they invoke special methods on the object). They don't have the myriad non-mutating methods of strings, so, if you need those, you'll indeed need a simple wrapper (delegating said methods to the str(...) of the array that the wrapper also holds).
It doesn't seem there should be any special complexity, unless of course you want to do something truly weird as you seem to given your example code (have an assignment, i.e., a *rebinding of a name, magically affect a different name -- that has absolutely nothing to do with whatever object was previously bound to the name you're rebinding, nor does it change that object in any way -- the only object it "changes" is the one holding the attribute, so it's obvious that you need descriptors or other magic on said object).
You appear to come from some language where variables (and particularly strings) are "containers of data" (like C, Fortran, or C++). In Python (like, say, in Java), names (the preferred way to call what others call "variables") always just refer to objects, they don't contain anything except exactly such a reference. Some objects can be changed, some can't, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the assignment statement (see note 1) (which doesn't change objects: it rebinds names).
(note 1): except of course that rebinding an attribute or item does alter the object that "contains" that item or attribute -- objects can and do contain, it's names that don't.

Just put your value to be shared in a list, and assign the list to both objects.
class A(object):
def __init__(self, strcontainer):
self.strcontainer = strcontainer
def upcase(self):
self.strcontainer[0] = self.strcontainer[0].upper()
def __str__(self):
return self.strcontainer[0]
# create a string, inside a shareable list
shared = ['Hello, World!']
x = A(shared)
y = A(shared)
# both objects have the same list
print id(x.strcontainer)
print id(y.strcontainer)
# change value in x
x.upcase()
# show how value is changed in both x and y
print str(x)
print str(y)
Prints:
10534024
10534024
HELLO, WORLD!
HELLO, WORLD!

i am not a great expert in python, but i think that if you declare a variable in a module and add a getter/setter to the module for this variable you will be able to share it this way.

Related

How to not get the object's location when using __str__ and print [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
How to make print call the __str__ method of Python objects inside a list?
(8 answers)
Closed 4 years ago.
Coming from a Java background, I understand that __str__ is something like a Python version of toString (while I do realize that Python is the older language).
So, I have defined a little class along with an __str__ method as follows:
class Node:
def __init__(self, id):
self.id = id
self.neighbours = []
self.distance = 0
def __str__(self):
return str(self.id)
I then create a few instances of it:
uno = Node(1)
due = Node(2)
tri = Node(3)
qua = Node(4)
Now, the expected behaviour when trying to print one of these objects is that it's associated value gets printed. This also happens.
print uno
yields
1
But when I do the following:
uno.neighbours.append([[due, 4], [tri, 5]])
and then
print uno.neighbours
I get
[[[<__main__.Node instance at 0x00000000023A6C48>, 4], [<__main__.Node instance at 0x00000000023A6D08>, 5]]]
Where I expected
[[2, 4], [3, 5]]
What am I missing? And what otherwise cringe-worthy stuff am I doing? :)
Python has two different ways to convert an object to a string: str() and repr(). Printing an object uses str(); printing a list containing an object uses str() for the list itself, but the implementation of list.__str__() calls repr() for the individual items.
So you should also overwrite __repr__(). A simple
__repr__ = __str__
at the end of the class body will do the trick.
Because of the infinite superiority of Python over Java, Python has not one, but two toString operations.
One is __str__, the other is __repr__
__str__ will return a human readable string.
__repr__ will return an internal representation.
__repr__ can be invoked on an object by calling repr(obj) or by using backticks `obj`.
When printing lists as well as other container classes, the contained elements will be printed using __repr__.
It provides human readable version of output rather "Object": Example:
class Pet(object):
def __init__(self, name, species):
self.name = name
self.species = species
def getName(self):
return self.name
def getSpecies(self):
return self.species
def Norm(self):
return "%s is a %s" % (self.name, self.species)
if __name__=='__main__':
a = Pet("jax", "human")
print a
returns
<__main__.Pet object at 0x029E2F90>
while code with "str" return something different
class Pet(object):
def __init__(self, name, species):
self.name = name
self.species = species
def getName(self):
return self.name
def getSpecies(self):
return self.species
def __str__(self):
return "%s is a %s" % (self.name, self.species)
if __name__=='__main__':
a = Pet("jax", "human")
print a
returns:
jax is a human
Answer to the question
As pointed out in another answer and as you can read in PEP 3140, str on a list calls for each item __repr__. There is not much you can do about that part.
If you implement __repr__, you will get something more descriptive, but if implemented correctly, not exactly what you expected.
Proper implementation
The fast, but wrong solution is to alias __repr__ to __str__.
__repr__ should not be set to __str__ unconditionally. __repr__ should create a representation, that should look like a valid Python expression that could be used to recreate an object with the same value. In this case, this would rather be Node(2) than 2.
A proper implementation of __repr__ makes it possible to recreate the object. In this example, it should also contain the other significant members, like neighours and distance.
An incomplete example:
class Node:
def __init__(self, id, neighbours=[], distance=0):
self.id = id
self.neighbours = neighbours
self.distance = distance
def __str__(self):
return str(self.id)
def __repr__(self):
return "Node(id={0.id}, neighbours={0.neighbours!r}, distance={0.distance})".format(self)
# in an elaborate implementation, members that have the default
# value could be left out, but this would hide some information
uno = Node(1)
due = Node(2)
tri = Node(3)
qua = Node(4)
print uno
print str(uno)
print repr(uno)
uno.neighbours.append([[due, 4], [tri, 5]])
print uno
print uno.neighbours
print repr(uno)
Note: print repr(uno) together with a proper implementation of __eq__ and __ne__ or __cmp__ would allow to recreate the object and check for equality.
Well, container objects' __str__ methods will use repr on their contents, not str. So you could use __repr__ instead of __str__, seeing as you're using an ID as the result.
__str__ is only called when a string representation is required of an object.
For example str(uno), print "%s" % uno or print uno
However, there is another magic method called __repr__ this is the representation of an object. When you don't explicitly convert the object to a string, then the representation is used.
If you do this uno.neighbors.append([[str(due),4],[str(tri),5]]) it will do what you expect.
The thing about classes, and setting unencumbered global variables equal to some value within the class, is that what your global variable stores is actually the reference to the memory location the value is actually stored.
What you're seeing in your output is indicative of this.
Where you might be able to see the value and use print without issue on the initial global variables you used because of the str method and how print works, you won't be able to do this with lists, because what is stored in the elements within that list is just a reference to the memory location of the value -- read up on aliases, if you'd like to know more.
Additionally, when using lists and losing track of what is an alias and what is not, you might find you're changing the value of the original list element, if you change it in an alias list -- because again, when you set a list element equal to a list or element within a list, the new list only stores the reference to the memory location (it doesn't actually create new memory space specific to that new variable). This is where deepcopy comes in handy!
print self.id.__str__() would work for you, although not that useful for you.
Your __str__ method will be more useful when you say want to print out a grid or struct representation as your program develops.
print self._grid.__str__()
def __str__(self):
"""
Return a string representation of the grid for debugging.
"""
grid_str = ""
for row in range(self._rows):
grid_str += str( self._grid[row] )
grid_str += '\n'
return grid_str

How to set up a class with all the methods of and functions like a built in such as float, but holds onto extra data?

I am working with 2 data sets on the order of ~ 100,000 values. These 2 data sets are simply lists. Each item in the list is a small class.
class Datum(object):
def __init__(self, value, dtype, source, index1=None, index2=None):
self.value = value
self.dtype = dtype
self.source = source
self.index1 = index1
self.index2 = index2
For each datum in one list, there is a matching datum in the other list that has the same dtype, source, index1, and index2, which I use to sort the two data sets such that they align. I then do various work with the matching data points' values, which are always floats.
Currently, if I want to determine the relative values of the floats in one data set, I do something like this.
minimum = min([x.value for x in data])
for datum in data:
datum.value -= minimum
However, it would be nice to have my custom class inherit from float, and be able to act like this.
minimum = min(data)
data = [x - minimum for x in data]
I tried the following.
class Datum(float):
def __new__(cls, value, dtype, source, index1=None, index2=None):
new = float.__new__(cls, value)
new.dtype = dtype
new.source = source
new.index1 = index1
new.index2 = index2
return new
However, doing
data = [x - minimum for x in data]
removes all of the extra attributes (dtype, source, index1, index2).
How should I set up a class that functions like a float, but holds onto the extra data that I instantiate it with?
UPDATE: I do many types of mathematical operations beyond subtraction, so rewriting all of the methods that work with a float would be very troublesome, and frankly I'm not sure I could rewrite them properly.
I suggest subclassing float and using a couple decorators to "capture" the float output from any method (except for __new__ of course) and returning a Datum object instead of a float object.
First we write the method decorator (which really isn't being used as a decorator below, it's just a function that modifies the output of another function, AKA a wrapper function):
def mydecorator(f,cls):
#f is the method being modified, cls is its class (in this case, Datum)
def func_wrapper(*args,**kwargs):
#*args and **kwargs are all the arguments that were passed to f
newvalue = f(*args,**kwargs)
#newvalue now contains the output float would normally produce
##Now get cls instance provided as part of args (we need one
##if we're going to reattach instance information later):
try:
self = args[0]
##Now check to make sure new value is an instance of some numerical
##type, but NOT a bool or a cls type (which might lead to recursion)
##Including ints so things like modulo and round will work right
if (isinstance(newvalue,float) or isinstance(newvalue,int)) and not isinstance(newvalue,bool) and type(newvalue) != cls:
##If newvalue is a float or int, now we make a new cls instance using the
##newvalue for value and using the previous self instance information (arg[0])
##for the other fields
return cls(newvalue,self.dtype,self.source,self.index1,self.index2)
#IndexError raised if no args provided, AttributeError raised of self isn't a cls instance
except (IndexError, AttributeError):
pass
##If newvalue isn't numerical, or we don't have a self, just return what
##float would normally return
return newvalue
#the function has now been modified and we return the modified version
#to be used instead of the original version, f
return func_wrapper
The first decorator only applies to a method to which it is attached. But we want it to decorate all (actually, almost all) the methods inherited from float (well, those that appear in the float's __dict__, anyway). This second decorator will apply our first decorator to all of the methods in the float subclass except for those listed as exceptions (see this answer):
def for_all_methods_in_float(decorator,*exceptions):
def decorate(cls):
for attr in float.__dict__:
if callable(getattr(float, attr)) and not attr in exceptions:
setattr(cls, attr, decorator(getattr(float, attr),cls))
return cls
return decorate
Now we write the subclass much the same as you had before, but decorated, and excluding __new__ from decoration (I guess we could also exclude __init__ but __init__ doesn't return anything, anyway):
#for_all_methods_in_float(mydecorator,'__new__')
class Datum(float):
def __new__(klass, value, dtype="dtype", source="source", index1="index1", index2="index2"):
return super(Datum,klass).__new__(klass,value)
def __init__(self, value, dtype="dtype", source="source", index1="index1", index2="index2"):
self.value = value
self.dtype = dtype
self.source = source
self.index1 = index1
self.index2 = index2
super(Datum,self).__init__()
Here are our testing procedures; iteration seems to work correctly:
d1 = Datum(1.5)
d2 = Datum(3.2)
d3 = d1+d2
assert d3.source == 'source'
L=[d1,d2,d3]
d4=max(L)
assert d4.source == 'source'
L = [i for i in L]
assert L[0].source == 'source'
assert type(L[0]) == Datum
minimum = min(L)
assert [x - minimum for x in L][0].source == 'source'
Notes:
I am using Python 3. Not certain if that will make a difference for you.
This approach effectively overrides EVERY method of float other than the exceptions, even the ones for which the result isn't modified. There may be side effects to this (subclassing a built-in and then overriding all of its methods), e.g. a performance hit or something; I really don't know.
This will also decorate nested classes.
This same approach could also be implemented using a metaclass.
The problem is when you do :
x - minimum
in terms of types you are doing either :
datum - float, or datum - integer
Either way python doesn't know how to do either of them, so what it does is look at parent classes of the arguments if it can. since datum is a type of float, it can easily use float - and the calculation ends up being
float - float
which will obviously result in a 'float' - python has no way of knowing how to construct your datum object unless you tell it.
To solve this you either need to implement the mathematical operators so that python knows how to do datum - float or come up with a different design.
Assuming that 'dtype', 'source', index1 & index2 need to stay the same after a calculation - then as an example your class needs :
def __sub__(self, other):
return datum(value-other, self.dtype, self.source, self.index1, self.index2)
this should work - not tested
and this will now allow you to do this
d = datum(23.0, dtype="float", source="me", index1=1)
e = d - 16
print e.value, e.dtype, e.source, e.index1, e.index2
which should result in :
7.0 float me 1 None

are user defined classes mutable

Say I want to create a class for car, tractor and boat. All these classes have an instance of engine and I want to keep track of all the engines in a single list. If I understand correctly if the motor object is mutable i can store it as an attribute of car and also the same instance in a list.
I cant track down any solid info on whether user defined classes are mutable and if there is a choice to choose when you define them, can anybody shed some light?
User classes are considered mutable. Python doesn't have (absolutely) private attributes, so you can always change a class by reaching into the internals.
For using your class as a key in a dict or storing them in a set, you can define a .__hash__() method and a .__eq__() method, making a promise that your class is immutable. You generally design your class API to not mutate the internal state after creation in such cases.
For example, if your engines are uniquely defined by their id, you can use that as the basis of your hash:
class Engine(object):
def __init__(self, id):
self.id = id
def __hash__(self):
return hash(self.id)
def __eq__(self, other):
if isinstance(other, self.__class__):
return self.id == other.id
return NotImplemented
Now you can use instances of class Engine in sets:
>>> eng1 = Engine(1)
>>> eng2 = Engine(2)
>>> eng1 == eng2
False
>>> eng1 == eng1
True
>>> eng1 == Engine(1)
True
>>> engines = set([eng1, eng2])
>>> engines
set([<__main__.Engine object at 0x105ebef10>, <__main__.Engine object at 0x105ebef90>])
>>> engines.add(Engine(1))
>>> engines
set([<__main__.Engine object at 0x105ebef10>, <__main__.Engine object at 0x105ebef90>])
In the above sample I add another Engine(1) instance to the set, but it is recognized as already present and the set didn't change.
Note that as far as lists are concerned, the .__eq__() implementation is the important one; lists don't care if an object is mutable or not, but with the .__eq__() method in place you can test if a given engine is already in a list:
>>> Engine(1) in [eng1, eng2]
True
All objects (with the exception of a few in the standard library, some that implement special access mechanisms using things like descriptors and decorators, or some implemented in C) are mutable. This includes instances of user defined classes, classes themselves, and even the type objects that define the classes. You can even mutate a class object at runtime and have the modifications manifest in instances of the class created before the modification. By and large, things are only immutable by convention in Python if you dig deep enough.
I think you're confusing mutability with how python keeps references -- Consider:
class Foo(object):
pass
t = (1,2,Foo()) # t is a tuple, :. t is immutable
b = a[2] # b is an instance of Foo
b.foo = "Hello" # b is mutable. (I just changed it)
print (hash(b)) # b is hashable -- although the default hash isn't very useful
d = {b : 3} # since b is hashable, it can be used as a key in a dictionary (or set).
c = t # even though t is immutable, we can create multiple references to it.
a = [t] # here we add another reference to t in a list.
Now to your question about getting/storing a list of engines globally -- There are a few different ways to do this, here's one:
class Engine(object):
def __init__(self, make, model):
self.make = make
self.model = model
class EngineFactory(object):
def __init__(self,**kwargs):
self._engines = kwargs
def all_engines(self):
return self._engines.values()
def __call__(self,make, model):
""" Return the same object every for each make,model combination requested """
if (make,model) in _engines:
return self._engines[(make,model)]
else:
a = self._engines[(make,model)] = Engine(make,model)
return a
engine_factory = EngineFactory()
engine1 = engine_factory('cool_engine',1.0)
engine2 = engine_factory('cool_engine',1.0)
engine1 is engine2 #True !!! They're the same engine. Changing engine1 changes engine2
The example above could be improved a little bit by having the EngineFactory._engines dict store weakref.ref objects instead of actually storing real references to the objects. In that case, you'd check to make sure the reference is still alive (hasn't been garbage collected) before you return a new reference to the object.
EDIT: This is conceptually wrong, The immutable object in python can shed some light as to why.
class Engine():
def __init__(self, sn):
self.sn = sn
a = Engine(42)
b = a
print (a is b)
prints True.

Python: Lazy String Decoding

I'm writing a parser, and there is LOTS of text to decode but most of my users will only care about a few fields from all the data. So I only want to do the decoding when a user actually uses some of the data. Is this a good way to do it?
class LazyString(str):
def __init__(self, v) :
self.value = v
def __str__(self) :
r = ""
s = self.value
for i in xrange(0, len(s), 2) :
r += chr(int(s[i:i+2], 16))
return r
def p_buffer(p):
"""buffer : HASH chars"""
p[0] = LazyString(p[2])
Is that the only method I need to override?
I'm not sure how implementing a string subclass is of much benefit here. It seems to me that if you're processing a stream containing petabytes of data, whenever you've created an object that you don't need to you've already lost the game. Your first priority should be to ignore as much input as you possibly can.
You could certainly build a string-like class that did this:
class mystr(str):
def __init__(self, value):
self.value = value
self._decoded = None
#property
def decoded(self):
if self._decoded == None:
self._decoded = self.value.decode("hex")
return self._decoded
def __repr__(self):
return self.decoded
def __len__(self):
return len(self.decoded)
def __getitem__(self, i):
return self.decoded.__getitem__(i)
def __getslice__(self, i, j):
return self.decoded.__getslice__(i, j)
and so on. A weird thing about doing this is that if you subclass str, every method that you don't explicitly implement will be called on the value that's passed to the constructor:
>>> s = mystr('a0a1a2')
>>> s
 ¡¢
>>> len(s)
3
>>> s.capitalize()
'A0a1a2'
I don't see any kind on lazy evaluation in your code. The fact that you use xrange only means that the list of integers from 0 to len(s) will be generated on demand. The whole string r will be decoded during string conversion anyway.
The best way to implement lazy sequence in Python is using generators. You could try something like this:
def lazy(v):
for i in xrange(0, len(v), 2):
yield int(v[i:i+2], 16)
list(lazy("0a0a0f"))
Out: [10, 10, 15]
What you're doing is built in already:
s = "i am a string!".encode('hex')
# what you do
r = ""
for i in xrange(0, len(s), 2) :
r += chr(int(s[i:i+2], 16))
# but decoding is builtin
print r==s.decode('hex') # => True
As you can see your whole decoding is s.decode('hex').
But "lazy" decoding sounds like premature optimization to me. You'd need gigabytes of data to even notice it. Try profiling, the .decode is 50 times faster that your old code already.
Maybe you want somthing like this:
class DB(object): # dunno what data it is ;)
def __init__(self, data):
self.data = data
self.decoded = {} # maybe cache if the field data is long
def __getitem__(self, name):
try:
return self.decoded[name]
except KeyError:
# this copies the fields data
self.decoded[name] = ret = self.data[ self._get_field_slice( name ) ].decode('hex')
return ret
def _get_field_slice(self, name):
# find out what part to decode, return the index in the data
return slice( ... )
db = DB(encoded_data)
print db["some_field"] # find out where the field is, get its data and decode it
The methods you need to override really depend on how are planning to use you new string type.
However you str based type looks a little suspicious to me, have you looked into the implementation of str to check that it has the value attribute that you are setting in your __init__()? Performing a dir(str) does not indicate that there is any such attribute on str. This being the case the normal str methods will not be operating on your data at all, I doubt that is the effect you want otherwise what would be the advantage of sub-classing.
Sub-classing base data types is a little strange anyway unless you have very specific requirements. For the lazy evaluation you want you are probably better of creating your class that contains a string rather than sub-classing str and write your client code to work with that class. You will then be free to add the just in time evaluation you want in a number of ways an example using the descriptor protocol can be found in this presentation: Python's Object Model (search for "class Jit(object)" to get to the relevant section)
The question is incomplete, in that the answer will depend on details of the encoding you use.
Say, if you encode a list of strings as pascal strings (i.e. prefixed with string length encoded as a fixed-size integer), and say you want to read the 100th string from the list, you may seek() forward for each of the first 99 strings and not read their contents at all. This will give some performance gain if the strings are large.
If, OTOH, you encode a list of strings as concatenated 0-terminated stirngs, you would have to read all bytes until the 100th 0.
Also, you're speaking about some "fields" but your example looks completely different.

Use a Descriptor (EDIT: Not a single decorator) for multiple attributes?

Python 2.5.4. Fairly new to Python, brand new to decorators as of last night. If I have a class with multiple boolean attributes:
class Foo(object):
_bool1 = True
_bool2 = True
_bool3 = True
#et cetera
def __init__():
self._bool1 = True
self._bool2 = False
self._bool3 = True
#et cetera
Is there a way to use a single decorator to check that any setting of any of the boolean attributes must be a boolean, and to return the boolean value for any requested one of these variables?
In other words, as opposed to something like this for each attribute?
def bool1():
def get_boo1():
return self._bool1
def set_bool1(self,value):
if value <> True and value <> False:
print "bool1 not a boolean value. exiting"
exit()
self._bool1=value
return locals()
bool1 = property(**bool1())
#same thing for bool2, bool3, etc...
I have tried to write it as something like this:
def stuff(obj):
def boolx():
def fget(self):
return obj
def fset(self, value):
if value <> True and value <> False:
print "Non-bool value" #name of object???
exit()
obj = value
return locals()
return property(**boolx())
bool1 = stuff(_bool1)
bool2 = stuff(_bool2)
bool3 = stuff(_bool3)
which gives me:
File "C:/PQL/PythonCode_TestCode/Tutorials/Decorators.py", line 28, in stuff
return property(**boolx())
TypeError: 'obj' is an invalid keyword argument for this function
Any pointers on how to do this correctly?
Thanks,
Paul
You can try using a descriptor:
class BooleanDescriptor(object):
def __init__(self, attr):
self.attr = attr
def __get__(self, instance, owner):
return getattr(instance, self.attr)
def __set__(self, instance, value):
if value in (True, False):
return setattr(instance, self.attr, value)
else:
raise TypeError
class Foo(object):
_bar = False
bar = BooleanDescriptor('_bar')
EDIT:
As S.Lott mentioned, python favors Duck Typing over type checking.
Two important things.
First, "class-level" attributes are shared by all instances of the class. Like static in Java. It's not clear from your question if you're really talking about class-level attributes.
Generally, most OO programming is done with instance variables, like this.
class Foo(object):
def __init__():
self._bool1 = True
self._bool2 = False
self._bool3 = True
#et cetera
Second point. We don't waste a lot of time validating the types of arguments.
If a mysterious "someone" provides wrong type data, our class will crash and that's pretty much the best possible outcome.
Fussing around with type and domain validation is a lot of work to make your class crash in a different place. Ultimately, the exception (TypeError) is the same, so the extra checking turns out to have little practical value.
Indeed, extra domain checking can (and often does) backfire when someone creates an alternate implementation of bool and your class rejects this perfectly valid class that has all the same features as built-in bool.
Do not conflate human-input range checking with Python type checking. Human input (or stuff you read from files or URI's) must be range checked, but not not type checked. The piece of the application that does the reading of the external data defines the type. No need to check the type. There won't be any mysteries.
The "what if I use the wrong type and my program appears to work but didn't" scenario doesn't actually make any sense. First, find two types that have the same behavior right down the line but produce slightly different results. The only example is int vs. float, and the only time is really matters is around division, and that's taken care of by the two division operators.
If you "accidentally" use a string where a number was required, your program will die. Reliably. Consistently.

Categories