Re: Unable to access module attribute with underscores in class method, Python 3

2016-01-08 Thread Joseph Fox-Rabinovitz
> On Thu, Jan 7, 2016 at 11:14 AM, Joseph Fox-Rabinovitz 
>  wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I have a module attribute whose name starts with a pair of underscores. I am 
> apparently unable to access it directly in a class method (within the same 
> module, but that is not relevant as far as I can tell). The following bit of 
> code illustrates the situation:
>
> __a = 3
> class B:
> def __init__(self):
> global __a
> self.a = __a
> b = B()
>
> This results in a NameError because of name-mangling, despite the global 
> declaration:
>
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "", line 1, in 
>   File "", line 4, in __init__
> NameError: name '_B__a' is not defined
>
> Not using global does not make a difference. I posted a similar question on 
> Stack Overflow, where the only reasonable answer given was to wrap __a in a 
> container whose name is not mangled. For example, doing `self.a = 
> globals()['__a']` or manually creating a dictionary with a non-mangled name 
> and accessing that.
>
> I feel that there should be some way of accessing __a within the class 
> directly in Python 3. Clearly my expectation that global would fix the issue 
> is incorrect. I would appreciate either a solution or an explanation of what 
> is going on that would convince me that accessing a module attribute in such 
> a way should be forbidden.
>
> -Joseph Fox-Rabinovitz
>
> P.S. For reference, the Stack Overflow question is here: 
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/34621484/how-to-access-private-variable-of-python-module-from-class

One more detail that makes me think that name mangling may be getting
greedy to the point of bugginess:

__a = 3
class B:
def __init__(self):
m = sys.modules[__name__]
self.a = m.__a
b = B()

Raises the same exception as all the other way I tried to access __a:
'module' object has no attribute '_B__a'!

   -Joseph
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Unable to access module attribute with underscores in class method, Python 3

2016-01-08 Thread Joseph Fox-Rabinovitz
Hi,

I have a module attribute whose name starts with a pair of underscores. I
am apparently unable to access it directly in a class method (within the
same module, but that is not relevant as far as I can tell). The following
bit of code illustrates the situation:

__a = 3
class B:
def __init__(self):
global __a
self.a = __a
b = B()

This results in a NameError because of name-mangling, despite the global
declaration:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "", line 1, in 
  File "", line 4, in __init__
NameError: name '_B__a' is not defined

Not using global does not make a difference. I posted a similar question on
Stack Overflow, where the only reasonable answer given was to wrap __a in a
container whose name is not mangled. For example, doing `self.a =
globals()['__a']` or manually creating a dictionary with a non-mangled name
and accessing that.

I feel that there should be some way of accessing __a within the class
directly in Python 3. Clearly my expectation that global would fix the
issue is incorrect. I would appreciate either a solution or an explanation
of what is going on that would convince me that accessing a module
attribute in such a way should be forbidden.

-Joseph Fox-Rabinovitz

P.S. For reference, the Stack Overflow question is here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/34621484/how-to-access-private-variable-of-python-module-from-class
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https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list