CODEWITHSUNDEEP
python
Md. Tanvir Raihan
Md. Tanvir Raihan

Reputation: 4285

In python what does it mean by everything is an object

I have started learning about python, reading some tutorials, and i have seen the sentence that Everything is an object in Python, what does it actually mean?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 5878

Answers (4)

najma bader
najma bader

Reputation: 121

It means that almost everything that you use:

  1. is an instance of a class
  2. has attributes

I say "almost" because this doesn't hold for keywords (such as for, if, def etc).

Everything is an instance of a class

When you define a variable, Python creates a pointer to an object in memory. This object is an instance of a class. You can use the function type() to see the class your variable belongs to.

>>> x = 100
>>> type(x)
int

int is the class itself - not a string representing it. Indeed, you could use this class to create other integers. You could think of classes as "factories" that create new objects of the type that they describe.

>>> # the class int is taking a string as a parameter and creating an integer
>>> int('123')
123

Going one step further, since we said that "everything is an object", classes must also be objects. But, if every object is an instance of a class, then also the classes must be an instance of some classes.

It turns out that in Python there is a metaclass type of which all classes are instances. You can think of it as a sort of "universal" factory that creates factories (our classes).

>>> type(int)
type

Everything has attributes

To see the attribute of an object you can use the dir function:

dir(x)

Attributes can be methods or simply store some data. For instance:

>>> import os
>>> 
>>> os.sep  # returns the string (some data) that shows the default path separator of your operating system
'/'

Finally, remember that you can change attributes

os.sep = '\\' # change to Window path separator

or create new ones:

os.pc_owner = 'hb'

Upvotes: 9

Raje Abhilash
Raje Abhilash

Reputation: 11

Python is Pure Object Oriented language. Python treats everything happening around it as the Objects. But Wait, There are other primitive, non-primitive and special structured data types. You Can check the datatype of your variable using built-in function of python called

type(variable_name) # will check datatype of variable.

dir(variable_name) # will check the functionality of particular object

Upvotes: 1

Pescolly
Pescolly

Reputation: 942

There are no primitive data types as you would find in Java or C++. For example try the following:

a = 5
dir(a)

You will get a rather large list of built in methods that you would not expect to get from "just" an integer.

Upvotes: 1

anati
anati

Reputation: 274

It was answered here !

Everything in Python is an object, and almost everything has attributes and methods. All functions have a built-in attribute doc, which returns the doc string defined in the function's source code. The sys module is an object which has (among other things) an attribute called path. And so forth.

Upvotes: 2

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