How can I make an instance of a class act like a dictionary?

[John Salerno]

Hi everyone. I created a custom class and had it inherit from the
"dict" class, and then I have an __init__ method like this:

def __init__(self):
self = create()

The create function creates and returns a dictionary object. Needless
to say, this is not working. When I create an instance of the above
class, it is simply an empty dictionary rather than the populated
dictionary being created by the create function. Am I doing the
inheritance wrong, or am I getting the above syntax wrong by assigning
the return value to self?

I know I could do self.variable = create() and that works fine, but I
thought it would be better (and cleaner) simply to use the instance
itself as the dictionary, rather than have to go through an instance
variable.

Thanks.

 

[Chris Rebert]

Hi everyone. I created a custom class and had it inherit from the
"dict" class, and then I have an __init__ method like this:

def __init__(self):
       self = create()

The create function creates and returns a dictionary object. Needless
to say, this is not working. When I create an instance of the above
class, it is simply an empty dictionary rather than the populated
dictionary being created by the create function. Am I doing the
inheritance wrong, or am I getting the above syntax wrong by assigning
the return value to self?

Assignment to `self` has no effect outside the method in question;
Python uses call-by-object (http://effbot.org/zone/call-by-object.htm
) for argument passing.
Even in something like C++, I believe assignment to `this` doesn't work.

I know I could do self.variable = create() and that works fine, but I
thought it would be better (and cleaner) simply to use the instance
itself as the dictionary, rather than have to go through an instance
variable.

Call the superclass (i.e. dict's) initializer (which you ought to be
doing anyway):
super(YourClass, self).__init__(create())

Cheers,
Chris

 

[Dan Sommers]

Hi everyone. I created a custom class and had it inherit from the "dict"
class, and then I have an __init__ method like this:

I know I could do self.variable = create() and that works fine, but I
thought it would be better (and cleaner) simply to use the instance
itself as the dictionary, rather than have to go through an instance
variable.

Check out the "Bunch" class:

http://code.activestate.com/recipes/52308/

HTH,
Dan

 

[John Salerno]

Assignment to `self` has no effect outside the method in question;
Python uses call-by-object (http://effbot.org/zone/call-by-object.htm
) for argument passing.
Even in something like C++, I believe assignment to `this` doesn't work.


Call the superclass (i.e. dict's) initializer (which you ought to be
doing anyway):
    super(YourClass, self).__init__(create())

Cheers,
Chris
--http://rebertia.com

Thanks. This ended up working:

def __init__(self):
self = super().__init__(create_board())

Is that what you meant for me to do? Why did assigning to self work in
this case, but not the original case?

 

[Benjamin Kaplan]

Thanks. This ended up working:

def __init__(self):
       self = super().__init__(create_board())

Is that what you meant for me to do? Why did assigning to self work in
this case, but not the original case?

It didn't do anything and still isn't doing anything.

In Python, names are assigned to objects


self -> <Object1>
^
foo -------|

Reassigning a name does not change the value, so
self = create()

Just makes an object2

self -> <Object2>

foo ---> <Object1>

The reason it's working here is because the super().__init__() call
modifies the existing object in place. It returns None, so you're
setting self = None but that doesn't matter because of what I
explained before about how assigning to self doesn't actually change
anything.