Many thanks your explaination cleared up many of the questions I had. I know think i can understand the purpose, regardless of my opinion, i do however think that one should be able to assign the value in the same way it is accessed. Given your previous example:
> class Counter(object): > "A mutable counter." > # implementation elided > class A(object): > instance_count = Counter() > def __init__(self): > self.instance_count.increment() if you changed > class A(object): > instance_count = Counter() > def __init__(self): > self.instance_count.increment() to > class A(object): > instance_count = 0 > def __init__(self): > self.instance_count = self.instance_count + 1 It would not work as planned. I understand all the reasons why this occurs, but i dont understand why its implemented this way. Because it acts in a different way than you expect. It seems to me that self.instance_count should not create a new entry in the __dict__ if a class variable of that name is already present anywhere in that objects hierarchy. Does that make sense? Again thank you for explaination. graham -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
