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Comment by grot | Hacker News Reader

In javascript you can modify an object

    var foo = Object();
    foo.blah = function(x,y) { ... };

But in python, that doesn't quite work. You can only do

    foo = object()
    foo.blah = lambda x,y: ...

lambdas are a bit more limited as they are restricted to one line, and you can't have print statements, which makes complicated expressions rather ugly.

edit: ah, as someone noted, the second code snippet should be something like foo = Foo() where

    class Foo(object):
        pass

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That's not quite right. While you're correct that lambda statements are restricted, I have never actually seen a lambda expression used to extend an object. Instead, you use a named function, which has none of these restrictions:

    foo = object()
    foo.name = "Hi thar"
    def hello(self):
       print "Hello, I'm %s" % self.name
    foo.hello = hello

This is, in fact, one of the reasons why the self parameter is explicit.

The above doesn't really work as the builtin object class doesn't allow extra attributes. Still any pure Python class does by default:

    class Foo(object):
        pass
    foo = Foo()
    foo.name = ...
    def hello(self): 
        ...
    foo.hello = hello

You should either remove `self` or bind it differently:

  foo = Foo()
  def hello():
      print("hello, %s" % (foo,))
  foo.hello = hello

`foo` is an instance therefore `self == foo` already.

  def hello(self):
      print("hello, %s" % (self,))
  foo.hello = types.MethodType(hello, foo)

Also, i forgot to add, your code snippet doesn't work. Some magic goes into the self binding.

    In [21]: def hello(self):
    ....:    print self.name
    ....: 
    In [22]: class Foo(object):
    ....:     name = 'blah'
    ....: 
    In [23]: goo = Foo()
    go
    In [24]: goo.hi = hello
    In [25]: goo.hi
    Out[25]: <function hello at 0x103985aa0>
    In [26]: goo.hi()
    TypeError                                 Traceback (most     recent call last)

    TypeError: hello() takes exactly 1 argument (0 given)

Use types.MethodType for that:

    >>> import types
    >>> 
    >>> def hello(self):
    ...     print self.name
    ... 
    >>> class Foo(object):
    ...     name = 'blah'
    ... 
    >>> goo = Foo()
    >>> goo.hi = types.MethodType(hello, Foo)
    >>> 
    >>> goo.hi()
    blah

Edit: pre-2.6 you'd use "new.instancemethod()"

Yes, or alternatively I believe

    In [27]: class Foo(object):
    ....:     pass
    ....: 
 
    In [28]: def hello(self):
    ....:     print self
    ....: 

    In [29]: blah = Foo()

    In [30]: blah.hello = hello.__get__(blah, Foo) 

    In [31]: blah.hello()
    <__main__.Foo object at 0x10397f650>

you may not have seen it, but it does work:

n [8]: class Foo(object): ...: pass ...:

In [9]: blah = Foo()

In [10]: blah.asdf = lambda x: x

In [11]: blah.asdf(3) Out[11]: 3

In [12]: blah.asdf(5) Out[12]: 5

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