Re: [Pythius-developers] python metaclasses

[Shae E. <sh...@we...>]

From: Frank Tobin <ft...@ne...>
Subject: Re: [Pythius-developers] python metaclasses
Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2001 00:29:52 -0500 (EST)

> Metaclasses seem more and more like a good way to go.  As Python
> progresses, metaclasses will be more and more possible, because of the

Metaclasses are called that because they affect how classes themselves work.
If you've read about or used Java, C++, and Python, you'll realize they have slightly different ways of doing inheritance or operator overloading, or other useful things.

If you consider specifying how inheritance and operator overloading work with an object, that object would be a metaclass.

A metaclass specifies how classes work. Python has multiple inheritance, Java does not. A metaclass object in Python could specify that Python cannot do multiple inheritance.

A particular metaclass instance could let Python have only instances and instance inheritance/delegation like Javascript, NewtonScript, and Self.

Does this help any?
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Shae Matijs Erisson - http://www.webwitches.com/~shae/
Rabid Linux/XEmacs User - MSOffice documents will be returned as LaTeX