Jackson wrote: > I have 4 classes: > > Lion(Animal): > Ant(Animal): > Bee(Animal): > Human(Animal): > > which are all subclasses of some superclass called Animal. Now I want > to define an occupation. For example, Worker. A worker can exist as any > of the 4 classes above. Their constructors are different and I might > want to add certain features. > > My first thought was to create a class called "Worker" and have the base > class determined by a variable which is passed into the constructor. > Most of the method calls will come from the Animal superclass anyway, > but some method calls might come from the Lion class, for example. >
Here are a couple of thoughts that *might* help: (1) mix-in i.e. a class can have multiple base classes: class AntWorker(Animal, Worker): (2) you can create classes on the fly using the 3-argument form of the built-in type() function: new_cls = type(name_of_class, base_classes_tuple, dict_of_methods_etc) so you can have just one base class (i.e. object) and populate the dict with methods and/or you can have pre-packaged base-classes each already containing relevant methods ... so when the order for a new tailored class comes in you just rush about your virtual warehouse throwing packaged base-classes into a tuple and extra methods into a dict, attach a name tag and then type() gift-wraps it for you. You need to read up on "method resolution order" aka "mro" before planning what methods go in what mixin classes and what methods are optional add-ons and what order you specify the classes in the tuple. HTH, John -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
