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# so with interfaces, missing methods will suddenly appear out of thin
# air ?

With interfaces, the idea is that they're enforced; so, they'll appear
because someone implements them.

--
Jonathan Daugherty
http://www.parsed.org

Thanks for the responses...Looks like I might have opened Pandora's box
here. Could I accomplish the above with an abstract class?

If the mechanic class had a "fixIt()" method defined, could I pass it
any object I wanted, and then just call the method that I expect to
find there, or do I need to strictly define the type, or class, of an
object that is passed to a method.

Scott Huey

# Thanks for the responses...Looks like I might have opened Pandora's
# box here. Could I accomplish the above with an abstract class?

Zope 3 has an interface system which is good. I recommend you look at
that.

--
Jonathan Daugherty
http://www.parsed.org

wrote:

> If the mechanic class had a "fixIt()" method defined, could I pass it
> any object I wanted

absolutely.

> and then just call the method that I expect to find there

yes.

> or do I need to strictly define the type, or class, of an object that is
> passed to a method.

no. this is Python. no need to negotiate with the compiler; just do what
you want, and the interpreter will tell you when that doesn't work.

also see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_typing

</F>

Jonathan Daugherty wrote:
> # Thanks for the responses...Looks like I might have opened Pandora's
> # box here. Could I accomplish the above with an abstract class?
>
> Zope 3 has an interface system which is good. I recommend you look at
> that.

Zope 3's interface system is quite good, but it's also quite different
from what he's probably expecting. On the up side, it's probably much
better than what he's expecting too.
--
Benji York

Jonathan Daugherty wrote:
> # so with interfaces, missing methods will suddenly appear out of thin
> # air ?
>
> With interfaces, the idea is that they're enforced; so, they'll appear
> because someone implements them.

But if you're writing tests you will check method signatures anyway, so
why bother? Besides how java-like interfaces will help you if one of
interface methods is supposed to accept one parameter that can be list
or dict and not accept None?