You mean private, protected, public, that kind of stuff ? They do not exist in Python. Conventionally if you don't want the user of a class to access a method or attribute, you use the prefix _ ;
class K(object): _a = 1 def __init__(self, val): self.arg = val self._hidden = 1 def _method(self): pass The _hidden attribute can still be accessed by ... >>> h = K()._hidden ... but hey ! You know you *should* not. It's the "we are all consenting adults" philosophy of programming. By the way, K._method and K._a won't appear in the (py-)doc of the class ... Cheers, SB -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list