On Wed, 28 Jul 2010 08:47:52 -0700, Carl Banks wrote: > On Jul 28, 7:32 am, Steven D'Aprano <st...@remove-this- > cybersource.com.au> wrote: >> On Wed, 28 Jul 2010 09:35:52 -0400, wheres pythonmonks wrote: >> > Thanks ... I thought int was a type-cast (like in C++) so I assumed I >> > couldn't reference it. >> >> Python doesn't have type-casts in the sense of "tell the compiler to >> treat object of type A as type B instead". The closest Python has to >> that is that if you have an instance of class A, you can do this: >> >> a = A() # make an instance of class A a.__class__ = B # tell it that >> it's now class B >> >> and hope that it won't explode when you try to use it :/ > > Type casts in C and non-pathlogical C++ don't modify the object they are > casting. > > int (and str, float, etc.) is the closest thing to a type cast in > Python.
Perhaps I have been misinformed, but my understanding of C type-casts is that (where possible), a cast like `int(var)` merely tells the compiler to temporarily disregard the type of var and treat it as if it were an int. In other words, it's a compiler instruction rather than a conversion function. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
