Hamish McKenzie wrote:
sometimes I want to be able to initialize an instance with a variety of
different data types.
as an obvious example I might want to initialize a 4x4 matrix with either 16
floats, a list/tuple or 16 floats, another matrix or a quaternion.
is there any other way to do it other than putting case statements in the
__init__ method of the class, or having a Matrix.FromQuaternion( quat )?
I recommend keeping the __init__() as dumb as possible. Ideally, it should just
assign to attributes. I would add a from<foo>() classmethod for each <foo> that
I wanted to support. If I really wanted an all-singing, all-dancing
initialization method, I would add another classmethod that would just dispatch
to the appropriate type-specific classmethod. I prefer classmethods to plain
functions because I can subclass.
--
Robert Kern
"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
an underlying truth."
-- Umberto Eco
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