class self acts like integer

Question

I didn't understand why. And It will raise an error 'int' object has no attribute 'v', but I want to access the self.v. When I print only self it will print some numbers. I couldn't understand what was going on. Here is my code.

class Candidate:
    def __init__(self,val,pscore,nscore):
        self.v = val
        self.p = pscore
        self.n = nscore

    def __str__(self):
        return f"{self.v} ({self.p},{self.n})"

    def check_plus_pos(self, guessval):
        count = 0
        b = self.v
        a = str(b)
        guessval = str(guessval)
        for i in range(0,len(a)):
            if a[i] == guessval[i]:
                count += 1
        return count

    def check_neg_pos(self, guessval):
        count = 0
        b = self.v
        a = str(b)

        guessval = str(guessval)
        for i in range(0,len(a)):
            for j in range(0,len(guessval)):
                if a[i] == guessval[j] and a[i] != guessval[i]:
                    count += 1
        return count

    def consistent(self, guess):
        if Candidate.check_plus_pos(self,guess.v) == guess.p and Candidate.check_neg_pos(self,guess.v) == guess.n:
            return True
        else:
            return False

The problem occurs at b == self.v I wanted to assign the self.v value to a variable.

Answer 1

To be honest it's pretty hard to understand what that code/class is supposed to do, imho it needs some serious refactoring.

My guess is you should:

• instantiate your class somewhere
• use the method as an instance method, so invoke it with self and not the class name
• do NOT pass self explicitly at all
• do NOT use abbreviations which are not commonly known
• do NOT use single letter variables a means literally nothing
• use docstrings for non-trivial functions (or as a rule of thumb to most of functions/methods)
• use type hints, which will help you catch this kind of errors automatically (if you configure your IDE that is)
• get rid of the assignment to b at all, it's not reused and doesn't seem do anything. This will do the same a = str(self.v)

    ... # all the class related code above
    def check_neg_pos(self, guessval):
        count = 0
        a = str(self.v)

        guessval = str(guessval)
        for i in range(0,len(a)):
            for j in range(0,len(guessval)):
                if a[i] == guessval[j] and a[i] != guessval[i]:
                    count += 1
        return count

    def is_consistent(self, guess: Candidate)->bool:
        return bool(self.check_plus_pos(guess.v) == guess.p and self.check_neg_pos(guess.v) == guess.n)
# Example usage
candidate_1 = Candidate(1,2,3)
candidate_2 = Candidate(4,5,6)
candidates_consistent = candidate_1.is_consistent(guess=candidate_2)
print(candidates_consistent)