In the Python IDE on Windows, you can quickly open any module in your library path with File->Locate... (Ctrl-L).

In Python, you can not subclass built-in datatypes like strings, lists, and dictionaries. To compensate for this, Python comes with wrapper classes that mimic the behavior of these built-in datatypes: UserString, UserList, and UserDict. Using a combination of normal and special methods, the UserDict class does an excellent imitation of a dictionary, but it's just a class like any other, so you can subclass it to provide custom dictionary-like classes like FileInfo.

Пример 3.11. Defining the UserDict class

class UserDict: def __init__(self, dict=None): self.data = {} if dict is not None: self.update(dict)

	Note that UserDict is a base class, not inherited from any other class.
	This is the __init__ method that we overrode in the FileInfo class. Note that the argument list in this ancestor class is different than the descendant. That's okay; each subclass can have its own set of arguments, as long as it calls the ancestor with the correct arguments. Here the ancestor class has a way to define initial values (by passing a dictionary in the dict argument) which our FileInfo does not take advantage of.
	Python supports data attributes (called “instance variables” in Java and Powerbuilder, “member variables” in C++), which is data held by a specific instance of a class. In this case, each instance of UserDict will have a data attribute data. To reference this attribute from code outside the class, you would qualify it with the instance name, instance.data, in the same way that you qualify a function with its module name. To reference a data attribute from within the class, we use self as the qualifier. By convention, all data attributes are initialized to reasonable values in the __init__ method. However, this is not required, since data attributes, like local variables, spring into existence when they are first assigned a value.
	This is a syntax you may not have seen before (I haven't used it in the examples in this book). This is an if statement, but instead of having an indented block starting on the next line, there is just a single statement on the same line, after the colon. This is perfectly legal syntax, and is just a shortcut when you have only one statement in a block. (It's like specifying a single statement without braces in C++.) You can use this syntax, or you can have indented code on subsequent lines, but you can't do both for the same block.

Java and Powerbuilder support function overloading by argument list, i.e. one class can have multiple methods with the same name but a different number of arguments, or arguments of different types. Other languages (most notably PL/SQL) even support function overloading by argument name; i.e. one class can have multiple methods with the same name and the same number of arguments of the same type but different argument names. Python supports neither of these; it has no form of function overloading whatsoever. An __init__ method is an __init__ method is an __init__ method, regardless of its arguments. There can be only one __init__ method per class, and if a descendant class has an __init__ method, it always overrides the ancestor __init__ method, even if the descendant defines it with a different argument list.

	Always assign an initial value to all of an instance's data attributes in the __init__ method. It will save you hours of debugging later.

Пример 3.12. UserDict normal methods

def clear(self): self.data.clear() def copy(self): if self.__class__ is UserDict: return UserDict(self.data) import copy return copy.copy(self) def keys(self): return self.data.keys() def items(self): return self.data.items() def values(self): return self.data.values()

	clear is a normal class method; it is publicly available to be called by anyone at any time. Note that clear, like all class methods, has self as its first argument. (Remember, you don't include self when you call the method; it's something that Python adds for you.) Also note the basic technique of this wrapper class: store a real dictionary (data) as a data attribute, define all the methods that a real dictionary has, and have each class method redirect to the corresponding method on the real dictionary. (In case you'd forgotten, a dictionary's clear method deletes all of its keys and their associated values.)
	The copy method of a real dictionary returns a new dictionary that is an exact duplicate of the original (all the same key-value pairs). But UserDict can't simply redirect to self.data.copy, because that method returns a real dictionary, and what we want is to return a new instance that is the same class as self.
	We use the __class__ attribute to see if self is a UserDict; if so, we're golden, because we know how to copy a UserDict: just create a new UserDict and give it the real dictionary that we've squirreled away in self.data.
	If self.__class__ is not UserDict, then self must be some subclass of UserDict (like maybe FileInfo), in which case life gets trickier. UserDict doesn't know how to make an exact copy of one of its descendants; there could, for instance, be other data attributes defined in the subclass, so we would have to iterate through them and make sure to copy all of them. Luckily, Python comes with a module to do exactly this, and it's called copy. I won't go into the details here (though it's a wicked cool module, if you're ever inclined to dive into it on your own). Suffice to say that copy can copy arbitrary Python objects, and that's how we're using it here.
	The rest of the methods are straightforward, redirecting the calls to the built-in methods on self.data.