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Python

Posted by gabrielalcaraz
gabrielalcaraz
7,694 Points

I am still not exactly sure what __init__ does

I still don't get what init does can someone please explain

1 Answer

Michael Hulet
Michael Hulet
47,912 Points
Michael Hulet
Michael Hulet
47,912 Points

__init__ is called to set up a new instance of an object, whenever one is created. For example:

class Something():
    def __init__(self, newValue):
        self.value = newValue

newObject = Something("here's some text")
newObject.value
>>> "here's some text"

To explain, we've defined a new class called Something, and we've written an initializer for it that takes in some data and sets it to a property called value on the new instance. After that, we've created a new instance of Something and given it a string "here's some text", and we've assigned that new Something instance to a variable called newObject. When we read what data is in newObject.value, we can see that it's the string "here's some text" like we passed into Something's initializer

gabrielalcaraz
gabrielalcaraz
7,694 Points

that sounds about right