I am starting to work with classes in Python, and am learning how to create functions within classes. Does anyone have any tips on this sample class & function that I am testing out?
class test:
def __init__(self):
self.a = None
self.b = None
self.c = None
def prod(self):
return self.a * self.b
trial = test
trial.a = 4
trial.b = 5
print trial.prod
Ideally the result would be to see the number 20.
You need to:
Create an instance of test.
Invoke the prod method of that instance.
Both of these can be accomplished by adding () after their names:
trial = test()
trial.a = 4
trial.b = 5
print trial.prod()
Below is a demonstration:
>>> class test:
... def __init__(self):
... self.a = None
... self.b = None
... self.c = None
... def prod(self):
... return self.a * self.b
...
>>> trial = test()
>>> trial.a = 4
>>> trial.b = 5
>>> print trial.prod()
20
>>>
Without the parenthesis, this line:
trial = test
is simply assigning the variable trial to class test itself, not an instance of it. Moreover, this line:
print trial.prod
is just printing the string representation of test.prod, not the value returned by invoking it.
Here is a reference on Python classes and OOP.
Ideally you could also pass in the values to a, b, c as parameters to your object's constructor:
class test:
def __init__(self, a, b, c):
self.a = a
self.b = b
self.c = c
def prod(self):
return self.a * self.b
Then, constructing and calling the function would look like this:
trial = test(4, 5, None)
print trial.prod()
trial = test()andtrial.prod()trialis.<bound method of test.prod of <__main__.test instance at 0x000....>>