On Monday, November 18, 2013 12:43:28 PM UTC-8, Ian wrote: > Classes and functions are frequently kept in module namespaces, where > they are known by a specific name. The intent is that the __name__ > attribute should match that name by which it is commonly referred. > > > > Specific instances are not typically widely referred to by set names > > in this way. They are more commonly stored in variables that are used > > to hold a wide variety of objects. > > > > In the namedtuple example that you give, it seems that you would want > the names of all instances of the ANamedTuple class to be the same > "ANamedTuple", and I really don't see what the purpose of giving them > all the same name would be.
I am implementing a state machine. The outputs of the various states in the machine have variable contents. I started by making dictionaries for each state output, but I soon tired of the bracket-and-quote-mark syntax for referring to the contents of these state output dictionaries. That's why I am switching to named tuples. It doesn't affect the __name__ issue, since dictionaries also cannot be called. I want to capture the names of the executed states in a record of the state machine's history. This information is already encoded in the namedtuple's type. > > 2. If I created a superclass of namedtuple which exposed > > type(namedtuple).__name__ in the namespace of the namedtuple itself, would > > I be doing anything harmful? > > Probably not. I just thought I would ask. > But why not just invent your own name attribute rather > than shadow the one that Python designates for classes and functions? I will never write to this attribute, only read it. And since the information I want is already there (albeit in a strange place), I am inclined to use it. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
