ufl team mailing list archive

[Pearu Peterson <pearu@xxxxxxxxx>]

Anders Logg wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 02, 2008 at 12:27:45PM +0200, Martin Sandve Alnæs wrote:
> > In Python, variables are made private or protected in an "informal
> > way" by prefixing their names with __ or _. Some places I've used
> > self._foo instead of self.foo for variables which the end-user (person
> > inputting a form) shouldn't touch, do you agree with this? Most of
> > these are variables the form compiler developers will be dealing with.
> > I haven't been completely consistent, so I just want green light
> > before I change these one way or the other.
>
> Agree, but shouldn't it be two underscores?

Two underscores are reserved for Python private names and there
is some magic effects with class attributes that have two underscores
as prefix (this is actually the way to get some protection to attribute 
values). Authors of Python packages should use one underscore for 
private names, in general.

Pearu