On Sat, 01 Mar 2014 03:06:38 +0200, Marko Rauhamaa wrote: > Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info>: > >> I can only imagine you mean something like this: >> >> class Outer: >> class InnerOne: >> ... >> >> class InnerTwo: >> ... >> >> class InnerThree: >> ... >> >> > No, I mean this: > > class StateMachine: > def __init__(self): > sm = self > > class Idle: > def connect(self): > ... > sm.set_state(Connecting) > ... [...]
Ah, interesting. You're not just using the classes as symbols, you actually are giving them behaviour and using a State pattern. But I'm not sure that there is a good reason to put the class definitions inside the __init__ method. That means every time you create a new StateMachine instance, the classes have to be re-created. (That might be a feature if you intend for instance1.IDLE != instance2.IDLE, but I don't see any good reason for that.) It will be much more efficient if you pull all the Idle, etc. classes out and make them top-level global classes. Or at least stick them inside the StateMachine class, which means that they only get created once, and are shared between all StateMachine instances. But then the closure over sm won't work... I'll need to think some more about that. However, the example as given won't quite work. You never instantiate the Idle etc. classes, which means the methods won't work. You need to make them class methods or static methods, or perform some metaclass magic prevent them from being turned into instance methods when called. Since in this example you've actually got significant behaviour in the states, they aren't just symbols, and some sort of solution along these lines (whether you use multiple inner classes or not) is appropriate. -- Steven -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
