Python calling method in class

Question

I\'m punching way above my weight here, but please bear with this Python amateur. I\'m a PHP developer by trade and I\'ve hardly touched this language before.

What I

Answer 1

Could someone explain to me, how to call the move method with the variable RIGHT

>>> myMissile = MissileDevice(myBattery)  # looks like you need a battery, don't know what that is, you figure it out.
>>> myMissile.move(MissileDevice.RIGHT)

If you have programmed in any other language with classes, besides python, this sort of thing

class Foo:
    bar = "baz"

is probably unfamiliar. In python, the class is a factory for objects, but it is itself an object; and variables defined in its scope are attached to the class, not the instances returned by the class. to refer to bar, above, you can just call it Foo.bar; you can also access class attributes through instances of the class, like Foo().bar.

---

Im utterly baffled about what 'self' refers too,

>>> class Foo:
...     def quux(self):
...         print self
...         print self.bar
...     bar = 'baz'
...
>>> Foo.quux

>>> Foo.bar
'baz'
>>> f = Foo()
>>> f.bar
'baz'
>>> f
<__main__.Foo instance at 0x0286A058>
>>> f.quux
>
>>> f.quux()
<__main__.Foo instance at 0x0286A058>
baz
>>>

When you acecss an attribute on a python object, the interpreter will notice, when the looked up attribute was on the class, and is a function, that it should return a "bound" method instead of the function itself. All this does is arrange for the instance to be passed as the first argument.