"Patrick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote
> Can anyone please point me to a document that explains "self" in
> layman's terms.
Try the OOP topic inmy tutorial...
> Or lacking such a doc throw in a much appreciated
> layman's explanation what "self" is and when/where to use it?
Others have given code samples but a conceptuial explanation
is that
a) self is only used in OO programming within metjhods of a class.
b) self refers to the actual instance of the object receiving the
message with caused the method to be invoked.
Thus if we have a class C with a method m and 3 instances
a,b and z then when we invoke a.m() self will refer to a and
when we invoke b.m() self will refer to b. This means that the
innards of the method can use self to access the instance
specific data for that invocation.
If you have used C++ at all you might recognise it as the
same as 'this' in C++ except that in Python you must explicitly
specify it whereas C++ creates 'this' magically behind the scenes.
See my tutorial for more on this under the heading
"Using classes".
If you haven't started writing classes yet, you can safely ignore
it for now!
--
Alan Gauld
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld
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