I checked the Python style guide, and I found no specific references to having instance variable names with reserved words e.g. self.type, self.class, etc.
What's the best practice for this?
asked Oct 10, 2016 at 18:16
Pablo
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1 Answer 1
Avoid it if possible.
You can get and set such attributes via getattr and setattr, but they can't be accessed with ordinary dot syntax (something like obj.class is a syntax error), so they're a pain to use.
As Aurora0001 mentioned in a comment, a convention if you "need" to use them is to append an underscore. The most common reason to "need" to have such attributes is that they're generated programatically from an external data source.
(Note that type is not a keyword, so you can do self.type just fine.)
answered Oct 10, 2016 at 18:19
BrenBarn
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Comments
lang-py
classis a keyword. You cannot use it.typeis not a keyword, so you can.self.type = somethingis actually not even a problem, but a variabletype = xis a bigger probem because it hides the built-intype