About Inheritance and super()

Question

Given the code:

class Character():
 def __init__(self, name):
 self.name = name
 self.health = 50
 self.damage = 10
class Warrior(Character):
 def __init__(self, name, weapon, armor):
 super(Character).__init__()
 self.weapon = weapon
 self.armor = armor
 self.strength = 10
 self.dexterity = 5
 self.intelligence = 5
Doug = Character("Doug")
Mark = Warrior("Mark", "Axe", None)

---

Why doesn't the Warrior class inherit the health from the Character class?
What would I need to do differently to be able to print Mark.health?

• torek: super is pretty tricky for several reasons; see stackoverflow.com/q/222877/1256452

Answer 1

You are using super() incorrectly; don't pass in Character on its own. In Python 3, don't pass anything in at all, but do pass name to __init__:

class Warrior(Character):
 def __init__(self, name, weapon, armor):
 super().__init__(name)
 self.weapon = weapon
 self.armor = armor
 self.strength = 10
 self.dexterity = 5
 self.intelligence = 5

Now attributes are set correctly, including health and damage:

>>> Mark = Warrior("Mark", "Axe", None)
>>> vars(Mark)
{'name': 'Mark', 'health': 50, 'damage': 10, 'weapon': 'Axe', 'armor': None, 'strength': 10, 'dexterity': 5, 'intelligence': 5}

Under the covers, super(Character).__init__() ends up calling the super.__init__() method which within a method on a class just happens to work but produces nothing of practical use (None is returned).

• Matt: thank you, I've been having trouble grasping the concept of super, making small programs like this to practice. Your comment helped clear up some misunderstanding.
• Matt: if the Character class took more parameters than just 'name' would I need to pass them to the init as well?
• Martijn Pieters: @Matt: yes, because the Character.__init__ method would require more parameters.