9.3.4 方法对象 Method Objects

Usually, a method is called immediately:

通常方法是直接调用的：

x.f()

In our example, this will return the string 'hello world'. However, it is not necessary to call a method right away: x.f is a method object, and can be stored away and called at a later time. For example:

在我们的例子中，这会返回字符串 'hello world' 。然而，也不是一定要直接调用方法。 x.f 是一个方法对象，它可以存储起来以后调用。例如：

xf = x.f
while True:
    print xf()

will continue to print "hello world" until the end of time.

会不断的打印 "hello world" 。

What exactly happens when a method is called? You may have noticed that x.f() was called without an argument above, even though the function definition for f specified an argument. What happened to the argument? Surely Python raises an exception when a function that requires an argument is called without any -- even if the argument isn't actually used...

调用方法时发生了什么？你可能注意到调用 x.f() 时没有引用前面标出的变量，尽管在 f 的函数定义中指明了一个参数。这个参数怎么了？事实上如果函数调用中缺少参数，Python 会抛出异常－－甚至这个参数实际上没什么用……

Actually, you may have guessed the answer: the special thing about methods is that the object is passed as the first argument of the function. In our example, the call x.f() is exactly equivalent to MyClass.f(x). In general, calling a method with a list of n arguments is equivalent to calling the corresponding function with an argument list that is created by inserting the method's object before the first argument.

实际上，你可能已经猜到了答案：方法的特别之处在于实例对象作为函数的第一个参数传给了函数。在我们的例子中，调用 x.f() 相当于 MyClass.f(x) 。通常，以 n 个参数的列表去调用一个方法就相当于将方法的对象插入到参数列表的最前面后，以这个列表去调用相应的函数。

If you still don't understand how methods work, a look at the implementation can perhaps clarify matters. When an instance attribute is referenced that isn't a data attribute, its class is searched. If the name denotes a valid class attribute that is a function object, a method object is created by packing (pointers to) the instance object and the function object just found together in an abstract object: this is the method object. When the method object is called with an argument list, it is unpacked again, a new argument list is constructed from the instance object and the original argument list, and the function object is called with this new argument list.

如果你还是不理解方法的工作原理，了解一下它的实现也许有帮助。引用非数据属性的实例属性时，会搜索它的类。如果这个命名确认为一个有效的函数对象类属性，就会将实例对象和函数对象封装进一个抽象对象：这就是方法对象。以一个参数列表调用方法对象时，它被重新拆封，用实例对象和原始的参数列表构造一个新的参数列表，然后函数对象调用这个新的参数列表。