> The fact that I had > to resort to this trick is a big indication of course that genuinely > private members (as opposed to a 'keep off' naming convention) are a bad > idea in general.
The fact that you had to resort to this trick is a big indication that the library you were using is bad designed; it has nothing to do with private members being a bad idea. You were using a library which interface was in-complete (provided that you "genuinely" really needed to access the private member to do what you wanted to do). Private members is a great thing. They are the foundations of encapsulation and object oriented design. The fact that Python allows you to access "private" methods because the only "restriction" is the name mangling does not mean you should access them and use them directly. I don't see the way private members are handled in Python a strenght or a weakness of the language as compared to other languages. However, I do see libraries that do not provide all the needed interface methods as poor designed, or programmers that try to work around the public interface of a class when it is not needed as poor programmers. Thanks, - Isaac. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
