Question

I was reading up on multiple constructors Polymorphism in Python. I came across this code.

import sys, types, pprint

class Vector:
    """
    Demo of a class with multiple signatures for the constructor
    """
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):

        if len(args) == 1:  foundOneArg = True;  theOnlyArg = args[0]
        else:               foundOneArg = False; theOnlyArg  = None

        if foundOneArg and isinstance(theOnlyArg, types.ListType):      
            self.initializeFromList(theOnlyArg)             
        elif foundOneArg and isinstance(theOnlyArg,Vector):
            self.initializeFromVector(theOnlyArg)           
        else:
            self.initializeFromArgs(*args)

        pprint.pprint(self.values)  # for debugging only

    def initializeFromList(self, argList):
        self.values = [x for x in argList]

    def initializeFromVector(self, vector):
        self.values = [x for x in vector.values]

    def initializeFromArgs(self, *args):
        self.values = [x for x in args]
#------------ end of class definition ---------------------

v = Vector(1,2,3) 
v = Vector([4,5,6]) 
q = Vector(v);

However, I don’t understand how the variable vector.values was set in the function definition of initializeFromVector.

I find it weird how the Python interpreter is able to access vector.values even though its not set manually in the program, nor I think values is a built-in variable of some kind.

Is this an example of mutable class? I always thought this behavior was weird.

Answer 1

It’s very simple, really: initializeFromVector takes an argument of type vector and looks up its values member. This must have been set previously when vector was constructed.

As a simpler example:

from copy import copy

class Set(object):
    def __init__(self, other=None):
        """Initialize; optionally copy the elements of another Set."""
        self.elements = set()
        if other is not None:
            self.elements = copy(other.elements)