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You're reading from  Python 3 Object-Oriented Programming - Second Edition

Product typeBook
Published inAug 2015
Reading LevelIntermediate
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781784398781
Edition1st Edition
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Author (1)
Dusty Phillips
Dusty Phillips
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Dusty Phillips

Dusty Phillips is a Canadian software developer and an author currently living in New Brunswick. He has been active in the open-source community for 2 decades and has been programming in Python for nearly as long. He holds a master's degree in computer science and has worked for Facebook, the United Nations, and several startups.
Read more about Dusty Phillips

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Case study


For this case study, we'll try to delve further into the question, "when should I choose an object versus a built-in type?" We'll be modeling a Document class that might be used in a text editor or word processor. What objects, functions, or properties should it have?

We might start with a str for the Document contents, but in Python, strings aren't mutable (able to be changed). Once a str is defined, it is forever. We can't insert a character into it or remove one without creating a brand new string object. That would be leaving a lot of str objects taking up memory until Python's garbage collector sees fit to clean up behind us.

So, instead of a string, we'll use a list of characters, which we can modify at will. In addition, a Document class would need to know the current cursor position within the list, and should probably also store a filename for the document.

Note

Real text editors use a binary-tree based data structure called a rope to model their document contents. This book...

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Python 3 Object-Oriented Programming - Second Edition
Published in: Aug 2015Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781784398781

Author (1)

author image
Dusty Phillips

Dusty Phillips is a Canadian software developer and an author currently living in New Brunswick. He has been active in the open-source community for 2 decades and has been programming in Python for nearly as long. He holds a master's degree in computer science and has worked for Facebook, the United Nations, and several startups.
Read more about Dusty Phillips