staticmethod not available when init runs

Question

I realised that I cannot call a class' static method from its __init__ method.

class c():

    def __init__(self):
        f()

    @staticmethod
    def f():
        print("f called")

c()

gives a NameError: name 'f' is not defined.

Why is it not able to find the static method?

Answer 1

This is simply because Python is searching for a function called f in the global namespace when you reference it like that.

To reference the class' f method, you need to make sure Python is looking in the appropriate namespace. Just prepend a self..

class c():

    def __init__(self):
        self.f()  # <-

    @staticmethod
    def f():
        print("f called")

c()

results in

f called