Because datetime is a new-style class: The Constructor __new__
If you are like me, then you probably always thought of the __init__ method as the Python equivalent of what is called a constructor in C++. This isn't the whole story. When an instance of a class is created, Python first calls the __new__ method of the class. __new__ is a static method that is called with the class as its first argument. __new__ returns a new instance of the class. The __init__ method is called afterwards to initialize the instance. In some situations (think "unplickling"!), no initialization is performed. Also, immutable types like int and str are completely constructed by the __new__ method; their __init__ method does nothing. This way, it is impossible to circumvent immutability by explicitly calling the __init__ method after construction. I think what you wanted was: >>> class ts(datetime): ... def __new__(self): pass ... >>> a=ts() -Larry -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
