coding style - (Usage of Class Variables) Pythonic - or nasty habit learnt from java? -

hello pythoneers: following code mock of i'm trying do, should illustrate question.

i know if dirty trick picked java programming, or valid , pythonic way of doing things: i'm creating load of instances, need track 'static' data of instances created.

class myclass:         counter=0         last_value=none         def __init__(self,name):                 self.name=name                 myclass.counter+=1                 myclass.last_value=name 

and output of using simple class , showing working expected:

>>> x=myclass("hello") >>> print x.name hello >>> print myclass.last_value hello >>> y=myclass("goodbye") >>> print y.name goodbye >>> print x.name hello >>> print myclass.last_value goodbye 

so acceptable way of doing kind of thing, or anti-pattern ?

[for instance, i'm not happy can apparently set counter both within class(good) , outside of it(bad); not keen on having use full namespace 'myclass' within class code - looks bulky; , lastly i'm setting values 'none' - i'm aping static-typed languages doing this?]

i'm using python 2.6.2 , program single-threaded.

you can solve problem splitting code 2 separate classes.

the first class object trying create:

class myclass(object):     def __init__(self, name):         self.name = name 

and second class create objects , keep track of them:

class myclassfactory(object):     counter = 0     lastvalue = none      @classmethod     def build(cls, name):         inst = myclass(name)         cls.counter += 1         cls.lastvalue = inst.name         return inst    

this way, can create new instances of class needed, information created classes still correct.

>>> x = myclassfactory.build("hello") >>> myclassfactory.counter 1 >>> myclassfactory.lastvalue 'hello' >>> y = myclassfactory.build("goodbye") >>> myclassfactory.counter 2 >>> myclassfactory.lastvalue 'goodbye' >>> x.name 'hello' >>> y.name 'goodbye' 

finally, approach avoids problem of instance variables hiding class variables, because myclass instances have no knowledge of factory created them.

>>> x.counter traceback (most recent call last):   file "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> attributeerror: 'myclass' object has no attribute 'counter'