Question

I understand that the following way of invoking a superclass constructor may be the preferred way. However, it does not work on all versions of Python. Specifically version 2.6

Is this a Python 3.0 feature ?

super(Manager, self).__init__(name, salary)

Answer 1

The act of calling super() from a subclass only works if the original class was extended from the Object class.

In other words:

class Song(object):
    def __init__(self, name, type):
        self.name = name
        self.type = type

class RapSong(Song):
    def __init__(self, name):
        super(RapSong, self).__init__(name, "Rap")

Here's more information about what I mean: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/805066/

Answer 2

Thanks Mike, that worked. Though it did surprise me. It's almost like a gotcha... that by default object is the superclass of everything, even if it's not mentioned, but when we want to use the super keyword, then we need to explicitly extend object.

This method of calling a superclass constructor does not seem to be working with all versions of Python