Proper form to call a method in Python?

The difference lays in the descriptor protocol, specifically in how descriptors provide Python's object-oriented features.

open is a class attribute of various classes; in each case, though, it has the type function. That type implements the descriptor protocol, via the definition of function.__get__, by returning either a function object or a method object, depending on whether open is accessed via the class itself or an instance of the class.

Instance lookup

Given

d = D()

the attribute lookup d.open is equivalent to

type(d).__dict__['open'].__get__(d, D)

which returns a method which wraps the original function. When called, the method passes a reference to d and any of its own arguments to the wrapped function.

f = d.open  # The return value of __get__
f()         # open(d)

Class lookup

The attribute lookup D.open is equivalent to

D.__dict__['open'].__get__(None, D)

which returns the function open itself.

f = D.open  # The return value of __get__
f(1)        # open(1)

In order to learn about this, I have to go in depth about the properties of functions and methods.

Accessing a class field of a class via its instances checks if there are __set__ and/or __get__ methods. If they are, the call happens via __get__.

Functions work this way: if a function is a class field of a class (in short, methods), they are called via function.__get__(object)(*args, **kwargs).

And here, we have a difference between Python 2 and Python 3:

• Python 2 unconditionally prepends the given object to the argumends and calls the underlying function with function(object, *args, **kwargs). object gets assigned to self then, which by convention is the name of the first parameter of a method.

• Python 3 checks if the given object is an instance of the class as it should be. If it isn't, we get an exception. If it is, the call gets processed as above.

Example:

def outer_f(self):
    return "f called with", self

class C(object):
    f = outer_f
    def g(self):
        return "g called with", self

c = C()
print(outer_f(c))
print(C.f(c))
print(C.f.__get__(c)())
print(c.f())
print(C.g(c))
print(C.g.__get__(c)())
print(c.g())

class A():
    def open(self):
        print(self)
        print("class A method open")


class B():
    def open(self):
        print("class B method open")
    def close(self):
        print("class B method close")


class D(A, B):
    def end_reached(self):
        print("end reached")

## Why do both of the following lines work & produce the same output?
D().open() # Okay
D.open(1) # BAD

output

<__main__.D object at 0x0045FE90>
class A method open
1
class A method ope

You might want to look at a static method

class A():
    @staticmethod
    def open():
        print("open ran")


class D(A):
    def end_reached(self):
        print("end reached")


D.open() # Good

output

open ran

That's not an inheritance problem.

As you can see in your method declaration, first argument is self.

D() just creates an object of class D. If you do anything on the object, that object is automatically passed as first argument.

However, when doing D.open(1) you don't invoke the method on the object, so the first argument in the method is first argument passed to it == your code assumes self=1. Because your methods behave like static methods (you don't use self inside them), you don't access self's inside, so the code doesn't break.

But if your open method invoked anything from self (another method or a field), then you would get an attribute error - because int object probably doesn't have a method like that.

Examples from build-in classes:

"aaa".split()
str.split("aaa")

They both behave the same.

"aaa" is of type str, so interpreted looks into class str for the method and automatically passes "aaa" as self. (Just like your D() is of type D. And d=D(), then d.open() will still know the type.)

The other one shows which class to ask for the method (str) but still needs an argument self. The way we define methods shows that "self" is really an argument as well, so we can just pass it.