Classes and Methods

In Python, classes are used to define objects with their own attributes and behaviors. They serve as blueprints for creating instances of objects, which are individual copies of the class. Classes encapsulate data (attributes) and functions (methods) that operate on that data.

Here’s an example of a simple class definition in Python:

class Person:
    def __init__(self, name, age):
        self.name = name
        self.age = age

def greet(self):
    print(f"Hello, my name is {self.name} and I am {self.age} years old.")

# Creating an instance of the Person class
person1 = Person("Alice", 25)
person1.greet() # Output: Hello, my name is Alice and I am 25 years old.

In the above example above, we define a class called Person. It has two attributes (name and age) and one method (greet). The __init__ method is a special method known as the constructor, which is called when an instance of the class is created. It initializes the attributes of the object.

The greet method takes self as its first parameter, which represents the instance of the object. By convention, this parameter is always named self. We can access the attributes of the object using the self keyword.

To create an instance of the Person class, we simply call it as if it were a function, passing the necessary arguments. In this case, we create an instance called person1 with the name “Alice” and age 25. We can then call the greet method on person1 to display a greeting.

This is just a basic example, but classes and methods can become more complex, with additional attributes and behavior. Methods can take additional parameters, return values, and perform various operations on the object’s data