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Re: interactive help on the base object

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On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 1:41 PM, Mark Janssen <dreamingforward@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> What methods, if any does it provide?  Are they all abstract? etc???
>>
>> Pretty much nothing useful :-)
>>
>> py> dir(object)
>> [...]
>>
>
> So (prodding the student), Why does everything inherit from Object if
> it provides no functionality?
>
> Practicality-beats-purity-yours?

Nothing useful to call directly. An int has some useful methods in Python:

>>> (258).to_bytes(2,"little")
b'\x02\x01'

So does a list:

>>> [1,4,1,5,9].count(1)
2

But there's nothing you'd normally want to call from object itself
(except maybe __repr__). There *are*, however, important pieces of
default functionality. Steven mentioned __eq__, and there's also its
pair __hash__. The default system works because the root type provides
implementations of those two functions:

>>> a = object()
>>> b = object()
>>> a == b
False
>>> d = {a:"A", b:"B"}
>>> d[a]
'A'

And it's important that these sorts of things work, because otherwise
a simple Python class would look like this:

class Foo:
    def __new__(self): pass
    def __init__(self): pass
    def __hash__(self): return id(self)
    def __eq__(self, other): return self is other
    # ...

This repetition is exactly what inheritance is good at solving.
Therefore putting that functionality into a base class makes sense;
and since everything MUST have these functions to be able to be used
plausibly, putting them in the lowest base class of all makes the most
sense.

ChrisA

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Re: interactive help on the base object Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-12-08 23:48 +0000
  Re: interactive help on the base object Denis McMahon <denismfmcmahon@gmail.com> - 2013-12-09 00:45 +0000
    Re: interactive help on the base object Mark Janssen <dreamingforward@gmail.com> - 2013-12-08 17:09 -0800
    Re: interactive help on the base object Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-12-09 01:38 +0000
    Re: interactive help on the base object Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-12-09 01:43 +0000
      Re: interactive help on the base object Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> - 2013-12-09 02:31 +0000
        Re: interactive help on the base object Mark Janssen <dreamingforward@gmail.com> - 2013-12-08 18:41 -0800
          Re: interactive help on the base object rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-12-08 18:58 -0800
            Re: interactive help on the base object Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> - 2013-12-09 04:16 +0000
              Re: interactive help on the base object rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-12-08 20:46 -0800
                Re: interactive help on the base object rurpy@yahoo.com - 2013-12-08 21:26 -0800
                Re: interactive help on the base object rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-12-08 22:44 -0800
                Re: interactive help on the base object Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-12-09 09:44 +0000
          Re: interactive help on the base object Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> - 2013-12-09 05:44 +0000
            Re: interactive help on the base object Alan Bawden <alan@scooby-doo.csail.mit.edu> - 2013-12-09 02:31 -0500
              Re: interactive help on the base object Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-12-09 18:39 +1100
                Re: interactive help on the base object Alan Bawden <alan@scooby-doo.csail.mit.edu> - 2013-12-10 00:34 -0500
                Re: interactive help on the base object Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-12-10 16:44 +1100
        Re: interactive help on the base object Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-12-09 13:57 +1100
    Re: interactive help on the base object Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2013-12-09 00:00 -0500
    Re: interactive help on the base object Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-12-09 23:48 +0000
  Re: interactive help on the base object Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> - 2013-12-09 01:58 +0000

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