Pythonic Way to Initialize (Complex) Static Data Members

Question

I have a class with a complex data member that I want to keep \"static\". I want to initialize it once, using a function. How Pythonic is something like this:

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Answer 1

You're right on all counts. data_member will be created once, and will be available to all instances of coo. If any instance modifies it, that modification will be visible to all other instances.

Here's an example that demonstrates all this, with its output shown at the end:

def generate_data():
    print "Generating"
    return [1,2,3]

class coo:
    data_member = generate_data()
    def modify(self):
        self.data_member.append(4)

    def display(self):
        print self.data_member

x = coo()
y = coo()
y.modify()
x.display()

# Output:
# Generating
# [1, 2, 3, 4]