| I've been doing a lot of reading about static methods in Python, and possibly getting over-confused by the minutia of the CPython implementation, as well as by the misnomer. Conceptually, a 'static method' is a function attribute of a class that is to be used as a function and not as a method (where 'methods', in Python, get semi-magic first parameters). Note that function attributes of instances are also just functions, and not methods (which sometimes fools people), as are function attributes of modules.
| not exactly sure what they are useful for or why they were introduced. Completeness (as RK said), occasional real usefulness, and for C++&Java programmers. Python did fine without them. | As near as I can see it, static methods are object methods that act just | like functions. Almost: class function/method, depending on your meaning of method. See above. |Er. I always thought that object methods *were* functions, | except they had some runtime magic that passed the object itself as the | first argument. Substitute class for object and class or instance for object itself and you have it. The runtime magic is a minor abbreviation but its major purpose is inheritance. Now you can more on to something more useful like metaclasses or decorators ;-). Terry J. Reedy -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
