Python: self.__class__ vs. type(self) [duplicate]

Question

I'm wondering if there is a difference between

class Test(object):     def __init__(self):         print self.__class__.__name__ 

and

class Test(object):     def __init__(self):         print type(self).__name__ 

?

Is there a reason to prefer one or the other?

(In my use case I want to use it to determine the logger name, but I guess this doesn't matter)

Answer 1

>>> class Test(object): pass >>> t = Test() >>> type(t) is t.__class__ True >>> type(t) __main__.Test 

So those two are the same. I would use self.__class__ since it's more obvious what it is.

However, type(t) won't work for old-style classes since the type of an instance of an old-style class is instance while the type of a new-style class instance is its class:

>>> class Test(): pass >>> t = Test() >>> type(t) is t.__class__ False >>> type(t) instance 

Answer 2

As far as I am aware, the latter is just a nicer way of doing the former.

It's actually not that unusual in Python, consider repr(x), which just calls x.__repr__() or len(x), which just calls x.__len__(). Python prefers to use built-ins for common functions that you are likely to use over a range of classes, and generally implements these by calling __x__() methods.