What's Happening Under the Hood: How Does = Work in Python?

The Mystery of = in Python

Developers often encounter the = operator in Python, but the inner workings of this shorthand may remain enigmatic. So, what exactly does = accomplish?

In essence, = is a convenient syntactic sugar for the iadd special method in the Python object model. This method enables objects to define custom behaviour for the = operator. Alternatively, if iadd is not defined, Python may use add or radd as fallbacks.

The implementation of iadd is flexible and class-specific, offering the ability to execute any desired operations. For instance, the built-in list object utilizes iadd to iterate through iterables and append each element to itself, mimicking the functionality of the extend method.

To illustrate, consider a custom class called Adder that leverages __iadd__:

In this example, we can initialize an Adder object with an integer and subsequently use = to increment its value. The iadd method prints a message during each invocation, demonstrating how it becomes active each time the = operator is utilized.

By understanding the intricacies of =, programmers can delve deeper into Python's object-oriented programming capabilities, enabling them to craft custom objects with enhanced functionality.

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