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On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 6:27 PM, Peng Yu <> wrote:
> http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/
>
> The above webpage states the following naming convention. Such a
> variable can be an internal variable in a class. I'm wondering what is
> the naming convention for the method that access such variable.
>
> Â* Â*- _single_leading_underscore: weak "internal use" indicator. Â*E.g. "from M
> Â* Â* Â*import *" does not import objects whose name starts with an underscore.

If there's a method to access the variable, then it's not all that
private, is it?
Accessor methods are not Pythonic. Just make the attribute public by
not prefixing it with an underscore.

See also "Python is Not Java":
http://dirtsimple.org/2004/12/python-is-not-java.html

Cheers,
Chris
--
http://blog.rebertia.com

On Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:47:34 -0800, Chris Rebert wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 6:27 PM, Peng Yu <> wrote:
>> http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/
>>
>> The above webpage states the following naming convention. Such a
>> variable can be an internal variable in a class. I'm wondering what is
>> the naming convention for the method that access such variable.
>>
>> Â* Â*- _single_leading_underscore: weak "internal use" indicator. Â*E.g.
>> Â* Â*"from M
>> Â* Â* Â*import *" does not import objects whose name starts with an
>> Â* Â* Â*underscore.
>
> If there's a method to access the variable, then it's not all that
> private, is it?

True, but it might be read-only, or the accessor might do validation to
ensure that the caller doesn't stuff a string in something expected to be
a float, or some sort of computed attribute. That's why we have
properties.


> Accessor methods are not Pythonic.

Accessor methods are *usually* not Pythonic, at least not the way they
are commonly used in Java.

In fact, Python has at least two built-in accessor functions:

globals()
locals()

There may be others.



--
Steven

Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:47:34 -0800, Chris Rebert wrote:
>
>>Accessor methods are not Pythonic.
>
> Accessor methods are *usually* not Pythonic, at least not the way they
> are commonly used in Java.

To elaborate, accessor methods that *only* read and write
another, ordinary attribute are completely unnecessary
in Python. In that case there is no harm in exposing the
underlying attribute directly, because you can always
replace it with a property later if you change your mind,
without requiring any change in calling code.

Also, even when you do need accessor methods, it's more
elegant to hide them behind a property than to expect
callers to use them directly. It makes the calling code
more concise, and allows for changing your mind in the
opposite direction.

--
Greg