Emanuele D'Arrigo wrote:
On Nov 29, 5:21 am, Steven D'Aprano <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
cybersource.com.au> wrote:
This is a side-effect of name-mangling. Double-underscore names are only
mangled when they are referred to directly as attributes, not when they
are passed to setattr, getattr etc. Those functions don't do any name
mangling.
Even as attributes, they are only mangled within the class definition.
"__*
Class-private names. Names in this category, when used within the
context of a class definition, are re-written to use a mangled form to
help avoid name clashes between “private” attributes of base and derived
classes. See section Identifiers (Names). "
Class-private is intended to mean 'private', not known and not used
outside the class definition. I believe the 'mangled' form is
intentionally not documented.
Ah! That make sense! Thank you!
It's a bit of an obscure thing right now. I don't see mention of it in
the description of the setattr/getattr built-ins:
http://docs.python.org/library/functions.html
Wouldn't be good to have a hint of the issue there?
I think not. The functions tell the truth when they say 'no such
attribute' Any mention might suggest that trying to access private names
from outside the class is a sensible thing to do.
Perhaps the __* doc quoted above could be improved. Is anything there
unclear?
Terry Jan Reedy
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