Instances in python

Question

I created the following example to understand the instances in python

import time;
class test:
    mytime = time.time();   
    def __init__(self):
        #self         


        

Answer 1

The mytime variable is first created as a class variable and not an instance variable.

Python tries to locate a name on an instance first and if it is not found it will lookup the name on the class. You can query the namespace of any object (including) classes by looking at the object's __dict__, which is a dictionary containing the instance variables.

As soon as you set test1.mytime = 12, you created a new name in that object's __dict__, which from then on shadowed the class variable with the same name.