subclass constructor using super's constructor

Question

Initially this was defined

class Mammal(object):
    def __init__(self, name):
        self.name = name

    def get_name(self):
        return self.name

    def say(self):
        return("What does the " + self.name + " says")

but now we want to create subclasses of Mammals, whose constructor will call the Mammal's constructor with the correct name.

  class Dog(Mammal):
        def __init__(self):
            Dog.self

This is my code. It says type object 'Dog' has no attribute 'self' what's the problem?

when print(Dog().get_name()) I should get Dog.

Answer 1

If you are using Python 2.x, you should write

super(Dog, self).__init__('name')

or, for Python 3:

super().__init__('name')

instead of

Dog.self

See Understanding Python super() with __init__() methods for detail.

If you want Dog().get_name() to return 'Dog', you should call

super(Dog, self).__init__('Dog')