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| -rw-r--r-- | Doc/tutorial/classes.rst | 16 |
1 files changed, 16 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Doc/tutorial/classes.rst b/Doc/tutorial/classes.rst index 2eb86e2..dddbb0c 100644 --- a/Doc/tutorial/classes.rst +++ b/Doc/tutorial/classes.rst @@ -420,6 +420,9 @@ classes defined in it. Usually, the class containing the method is itself defined in this global scope, and in the next section we'll find some good reasons why a method would want to reference its own class! +Each value is an object, and therefore has a *class* (also called its *type*). +It is stored as ``object.__class__``. + .. _tut-inheritance: @@ -469,6 +472,19 @@ arguments)``. This is occasionally useful to clients as well. (Note that this only works if the base class is defined or imported directly in the global scope.) +Python has two builtin functions that work with inheritance: + +* Use :func:`isinstance` to check an object's type: ``isinstance(obj, int)`` + will be ``True`` only if ``obj.__class__`` is :class:`int` or some class + derived from :class:`int`. + +* Use :func:`issubclass` to check class inheritance: ``issubclass(bool, int)`` + is ``True`` since :class:`bool` is a subclass of :class:`int`. However, + ``issubclass(unicode, str)`` is ``False`` since :class:`unicode` is not a + subclass of :class:`str` (they only share a common ancestor, + :class:`basestring`). + + .. _tut-multiple: |