Johnny wrote: > Hi, > > I wonder what is the difference between the built-in function > getattr() and the normal call of a function of a class. Here is the > details: > > getattr( object, name[, default]) > > Return the value of the named attributed of object. name must be a > string. If the string is the name of one of the object's attributes, > the result is the value of that attribute. For example, getattr(x, > 'foobar') is equivalent to x.foobar. If the named attribute does not > exist, default is returned if provided, otherwise AttributeError is > raised. > > Is that to say the only difference between the two is that no > matter the specific function exists or not the built-in func will > always return a value, but "class.function" will not?
No, it will only return _always_ a value if you provide a default one. If not, they have the exact same semantics. What you've got here is something usually called "syntactic sugaring" - a specialized syntax that performs certain instructions that _could_ be done by hand - but the concise syntax is (supposedly, and certainly in this case) easier to read/write/understand. There are others - e.g. list comprehensions or a < b < c. Regards, Diez -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
