Re: Unification of Methods and Functions

From: Greg Ewing (greg_at_cosc.canterbury.ac.nz)
Date: 05/07/04 

Date: Fri, 07 May 2004 15:59:20 +1200

David MacQuigg wrote:
> Static methods
> are necessary because it is a very natural thing to write a method in
> a class that needs to work without being bound to any particular
> instance.

I beg to differ. It might seem natural to someone who's
been exposed to C++ or Java, but I don't think it's
a priori a natural thing at all.

In Python, a function defined inside a class is a method.
If you want a function to be a method, you put it inside
a class. If you don't want it to be a method, you don't
put it inside a class. It's as simple as that. 

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept,
University of Canterbury,	
Christchurch, New Zealand
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg

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