Re: Newbie: Why doesn't this work

Thanks you Gabriel and Timm for your thoughtful responses. I am very
appreciative.

I had heard about the properties function, but wanted to understand
the old syntax first before I tried that. Thanks to your responses, I
was able to see what the problem was.

Here is a solution I came up with:

class Person():
def __init__(self, fName="", lName=""):
self.__fName = fName
self.__lName = lName

def __getattr__(self, attr):
if attr == "name":
return self.__fName + " " + self.__lName
else:
return self.__dict__[attr]

def __setattr__(self, attr, value):
# this assumes that value is a tuple of first and last name
if attr == "name":
self.__fName, self.__lName = value
else:
self.__dict__[attr] = value


P = Person("Joe", "Smith")

print P.name

P.name = ("Jane", "Doe")

print P.name

This works as expected printing "Joe Smith" and then "Jane Doe".

To be honest, I think the above old syle (I guess) method is pretty
cool and elegant.

Thanks again and have a GREAT NEW YEAR!!

Chris (ct60@xxxxxxx)
.