[Python-3000] Types and classes (original) (raw)

Amaury Forgeot d'Arc amauryfa at gmail.com
Thu Apr 3 00:03:58 CEST 2008


Hello,

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 11:57 PM, Paul Prescod <paul at prescod.net> wrote:

Apologies if this has been discussed before.

But does anyone else find it odd that the types of some things are classes and the classes of some things are types? >>> type(socket.socket()) <class 'socket.socket'> >>> type("abc") <type 'str'> >>> socket.socket().class <class 'socket.socket'> >>> "abc".class <type 'str'> In a recent talk I could only explain this as a historical quirk. As I understand, it is now possible to make types that behave basically exactly like classes and classes that behave exactly like types. Is there any important difference between them anymore?

I can find one difference:

and there is a difference in behaviour: most types don't have a writable dict, and you cannot add members. classes are more flexible.

-- Amaury Forgeot d'Arc



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