Python “protected” attributes

Question

How do I access a private attribute of a parent class from a subclass (without making it public)?

Answer 1

if the variable name is "__secret" and the class name is "MyClass" you can access it like this on an instance named "var"

var._MyClass__secret

The convention to suggest/emulate protection is to name it with a leading underscore: self._protected_variable = 10

Of course, anybody can modify it if it really wants.