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Private, “Protected” Attributes in Python — Demystified Once and For All

All there is to know about private and “protected” attributes in 748 words

Never, ever use two leading underscores. This is annoyingly private. — Ian Bicking, Creator of pip, virtualenv, and many others

How many times have you encountered these words: Public, Private, and Protected in the world of Python? And how many times those one leading underscores _, two leading underscores __puzzled you, trying to make sense of them?

Well, let’s demystify them once and for all. What’s the use of private and “protected” attributes. And, how they look like in the Python world.

What’s The Point of A Private Attribute Anyway?

Consider this scenario: You have a class named Vehiclewhich internally uses an instance attribute named horn and does not want to expose it. Now, you want to subclass Vehicleand name your own class MyCar.

If you create your own horn instance attribute inside the class MyCaryou will be overriding the Vehicle’s horn instance attribute. What happens as a consequence is that you will smash all those methods in Vehicle class that…