Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
In object-oriented programming, a class defines the shared aspects of objects created from the class. The capabilities of a class differ between programming languages, but generally the shared aspects consist of state and behavior that are each either associated with a particular object or with all objects of that class.
In Python, everything is an object, even classes. Classes, as objects, have a class, which is known as their metaclass. Python also supports multiple inheritance and mixins. The language supports extensive introspection of types and classes. Types can be read and compared—types are instances of type. The attributes of an object can be ...
Python allows programmers to define their own types using classes, most often used for object-oriented programming. New instances of classes are constructed by calling the class (for example, SpamClass or EggsClass ()), and the classes are instances of the metaclass type (itself an instance of itself), allowing metaprogramming and reflection.
A class variable is not an instance variable. It is a special type of class attribute (or class property, field, or data member). The same dichotomy between instance and class members applies to methods ("member functions") as well; a class may have both instance methods and class methods.
For example, class Person might define variables "first_name" and "last_name" with method "make_full_name()". These will also be available in class Employee, which might add the variables "position" and "salary". It is guaranteed that all instances of class Employee will have the same variables, such as the name, position, and salary.
The order of inheritance affects the class semantics. Python had to deal with this upon the introduction of new-style classes, all of which have a common ancestor, object. Python creates a list of classes using the C3 linearization (or Method Resolution Order (MRO)) algorithm.
In class-based programming, inheritance is done by defining new classes as extensions of existing classes: the existing class is the parent class and the new class is the child class. If a child class has only one parent class, this is known as single inheritance , while if a child class can have more than one parent class, this is known as ...
Instead the class browser allows to edit the class together with its metaclass at the same time. The names of classes in the metaclass hierarchy are easily confused with the concepts of the same name. For instance: Object is the base class that provides common methods for all objects; "an object" is an integer, or a widget, or a Car, etc.