Hrvoje Niksic wrote: > Wildemar Wildenburger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > >> Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven wrote: >>> To restate it more correctly: __init__ is akin to a constructor. >>> >> No. See Hrvoje Niksic's reply (and Ben Finney's to which it was a >> reply). >> >> __init__() /initializes/ an instance (automatically after >> creation). It is called, /after/ the instance has been constructed > > I don't understand the purpose of this "correction". After all, > __init__ *is* the closest equivalent to what other languages would > call a constructor.
Nevertheless, __init__ doesn't construct anything. You can even call it to reinitialize an existing object: Python 2.5.1 (r251:54863, May 2 2007, 16:56:35) [GCC 4.1.2 (Ubuntu 4.1.2-0ubuntu4)] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> class AClass (object): ... def __init__ (self): ... self.a = 4 ... >>> a = AClass() >>> a.a 4 >>> a.a = 5 >>> a.a 5 >>> a.__init__() >>> a.a 4 Cheers, Mel. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list