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In Python, everything is an object, even classes. Classes, as objects, have a class, which is known as their metaclass. Python also supports multiple inheritance and mixins. The language supports extensive introspection of types and classes. Types can be read and compared—types are instances of type. The attributes of an object can be ...
Most modern programming languages provide features to define and call functions, including syntax for accessing such features, including: Delimit the implementation of a function from the rest of the program; Assign an identifier, name, to a function; Define formal parameters with a name and data type for each; Assign a data type to the return ...
In computer science, a programming language is said to have first-class functions if it treats functions as first-class citizens. This means the language supports passing functions as arguments to other functions, returning them as the values from other functions, and assigning them to variables or storing them in data structures. [ 1 ]
Python allows programmers to define their own types using classes, most often used for object-oriented programming. New instances of classes are constructed by calling the class (for example, SpamClass or EggsClass ()), and the classes are instances of the metaclass type (itself an instance of itself), allowing metaprogramming and reflection.
A local class is a class defined within a procedure or function. Such structure limits references to the class name to within the scope where the class is declared. Depending on the semantic rules of the language, there may be additional restrictions on local classes compared to non-local ones.
The class defines the data format or type (including member variables and their types) and available procedures (class methods or member functions) for a given type or class of object. Objects are created by calling a special type of method in the class known as a constructor .
In some cases, the composition of functions is interesting as a function in its own right, to be used later. Such a function can always be defined but languages with first-class functions make it easier. The ability to easily compose functions encourages factoring (breaking apart) functions for maintainability and code reuse. More generally ...
Whether this suffices to call function values first-class is disputed. Some authors require it be possible to create new functions at runtime to call them 'first-class'. [ citation needed ] Under this definition, functions in C are not first-class objects; instead, they are sometimes called second-class objects , because they can still be ...