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Name mangling vs qualified access to class attributes

Cameron Simpson cs at zip.com.au
Tue Dec 13 16:52:23 EST 2016 
On 13Dec2016 12:27, paolieri at gmail.com <paolieri at gmail.com> wrote:
>The official Python tutorial at
>https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/classes.html#private-variables
>
>says that "name mangling is helpful for letting subclasses override methods without breaking intraclass method calls" and makes an interesting example:
>
>class Mapping:
>    def __init__(self, iterable):
>        self.items_list = []
>        self.__update(iterable)
>
>    def update(self, iterable):
>        for item in iterable:
>            self.items_list.append(item)
>
>    __update = update   # private copy of original update() method
>
>class MappingSubclass(Mapping):
>
>    def update(self, keys, values):
>        # provides new signature for update()
>        # but does not break __init__()
>        for item in zip(keys, values):
>            self.items_list.append(item)
>
>It seems to me that, in this example, one could just have:
>
>class Mapping:
>    def __init__(self, iterable):
>        self.items_list = []
>        Mapping.update(self, iterable)
>
>    def update(self, iterable):
>        for item in iterable:
>            self.items_list.append(item)
>
>and avoid copying 'Mapping.update' into 'Mapping.__update'. More generally, any time one needs to "let subclasses override methods without breaking intraclass method calls" (the goal stated in the tutorial), using qualified access to class attributes/methods should suffice.
>
>Am I missing something? Is 'self.__update(iterable)' in 'Mapping.__init__' preferable to 'Mapping.update(self, iterable)'?

IMO, mostly in that "Mapping.update" hardwires the class name, whereas 
"self.__update" will survive a class rename.

I confess I've never used name mangling in the manner shown in the example.

Hoping for more insightful comments...

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au>
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