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9.7 Odds and Ends

Sometimes it is useful to have a data type similar to the Pascal ``record'' or C ``struct'', bundling together a couple of named data items. An empty class definition will do nicely, e.g.:

      class Employee:
          pass

      john = Employee() # Create an empty employee record

      # Fill the fields of the record
      john.name = 'John Doe'
      john.dept = 'computer lab'
      john.salary = 1000

A piece of Python code that expects a particular abstract data type can often be passed a class that emulates the methods of that data type instead. For instance, if you have a function that formats some data from a file object, you can define a class with methods `read()` and `readline()` that gets the data from a string buffer instead, and pass it as an argument.

Instance method objects have attributes, too: `m.im_self` is the object of which the method is an instance, and `m.im_func` is the function object corresponding to the method.

- 9.7.1 Exceptions Can Be Classes