Is self.__dict__.update(**kwargs) good or poor style?

Question

In Python, say I have some class, Circle, that inherits from Shape. Shape needs x- and y-coordinates, and, in addition, Circle needs a radius. I want to be able to initializ

Answer 1

If you wish to assign automatically, I suggest the following approach:

def __init__(self, **kwargs):
    for key, value in kwargs.iteritems():
        setattr(self, key, value)

which, in terms of style, is somewhere in between writing it explicitly and hacking it yourself using self.__dict__.