Question

Possible Duplicate:
Special (magic) methods in Python
who can tell me what can call the built-in functions in next code

I have being using python and every now and then I discover an implicit class method of the type __xyz__ which holds a special meaning and is over-rided for custom usages.

For example:

class some_class:
    def __init__(self):
        # Everyone knows about this. [ Constructor ]
        pass

    def __str__(self):
        # string representation of object I suppose.
        pass

    def __unicode__(self):
        # Unicode representation of object I guess
        pass

    def __del__(self):
        # Similar to destructor
        pass

These all available over-ridables are useful, but I am not able to find how to refer them or find a documentation of all such available __xyz__ types available in a python class.

What all __xyz__ stuff is available and how do you use them to make your life easy ?

What is the pythonic zen behind this ?
What are the analogous counterparts in other languages such as C++ ?

Answer 1

The possible names are described in section 3.4 of the Python language specification.