Question

Complex question I assume, but studying OWL opened a new perspective to live, the universe and everything. I’m going philosophical here.

I am trying to achieve a class C which is subclass of B which in turn is subclass of C. Just for fun, you know…

So here it is

>>> class A(object): pass
... 
>>> class B(A): pass
... 
>>> class C(B): pass
... 
>>> B.__bases__
(<class '__main__.A'>,)
>>> B.__bases__ = (C,)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: a __bases__ item causes an inheritance cycle
>>> 

clearly, python is smart and forbids this. However, in OWL it is possible to define two classes to be mutual subclasses. The question is: what is the mind boggling explanation why this is allowed in OWL (which is not a programming language) and disallowed in programming languages ?

Answer 1

Python doesn’t allow it because there is no sensible way to do it. You could invent arbitrary rules about how to handle such a case (and perhaps some languages do), but since there is no actual gain in doing so, Python refuses to guess. Classes are required to have a stable, predictable method resolution order for a number of reasons, and so weird, unpredictable or surprising MROs are not allowed.

That said, there is a special case in Python: type and object. object is an instance of type, and type is a subclass of object. And of course, type is also an instance of type (since it’s a subclass of object). This might be why OWL allows it: you need to start a class/metaclass hierarchy in some singularity, if you want everything to be an object and all objects to have a class.