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Adiv Abramson
6,919 PointsAren't classes always capitalized, e.g. Math? In the expression datetime.datetime which is the class?
Seems to me that when working with datetime values we should get that functionality by typing
from datetime import Datetime
just as we did when creating the monster game:
from monster import Monster
I assume that the first datatime in the expression datetime.datetime is the namespace or module and the second instance of datetime is Python's datetime class. If that's true, shouldn't it really be written as datetime.Datetime?
3 Answers
Kenneth Love
Treehouse Guest TeacherObjects and classes are, for most purposes, exactly the same thing. I guess you could think of an object as being an instance of a class, though, which makes them sorta different. Anyway...
datetime is the library (like your monster.py file). datetime.datetime is the class. So why isn't it capitalized? Well, why isn't list or str or dict capitalized? Python's internal tradition seems to be that older and very commonly used classes aren't capitalized. I'm sure there's a historical reason, but I don't personally know it.
Gavin Ralston
28,770 Pointsdatetime is a builtin module, and datetime.datetime is a builtin class, so capitalization isn't used. If it's in the batteries that are included with python by default, I think that's the rule.
Vittorio Somaschini
33,371 PointsHello Adiv.
"from datetime import Datetime"
We haven't used this ( I think) as we need to import the whole datetime library, with all its peculiarities, so we just import datetime.
Regarding the datetime.datetime I think that is just the was to call that object and not a class.
Maybe someone will have a more exhaustive answer to the second part of your question.
Vittorio
Adiv Abramson
6,919 PointsAdiv Abramson
6,919 PointsI hear you. It's like C# or Java, which capitalize String objects but not int, float etc, even though they're all objects, technically speaking. Thank you.
Kenneth Love
Treehouse Guest TeacherKenneth Love
Treehouse Guest TeacherYeah, it's weird and inconsistent (sadly). Typically it's the older things. You just end up memorizing which is which or rely on documentation.