Calling parent class with multiple inheritance in python

Question

I'm apologizing in advance if this question was already answered, I just couldn't find it. When using multiple inheritance, how can I use a method of a specific parent? Let's say I have something like this

Class Ancestor:
    def gene:

Class Dad(Ancestor):
    def gene:
        ...

Class Mom(Ancestor):
    def gene:
       ...

Class Child(Dad,Mom):
    def gene:
        if(dad is dominant):
             #call dad's gene
        else:
             #call mom's gene

How can I do that? The super() doesn't have the option the specify the specific parent. Thanks! Edit: Forgot to mention an extremely important detail - the methods are of the same name and are overridden. Sorry, and thanks again!

Daniel Roseman · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-20 08:23:39Z

12

That's not what super is for. super is just meant to call the next item in the inheritance hierarchy, whatever it is - in other words, it's supposed to be used when you don't know or care what that hierarchy is.

For your case, you probably just want to call the method directly. But note that you don't actually need to deal with ancestors at all, because methodA and methodB are not overridden anyway: so you can just call them on self:

if whatever:
   self.methodA()
else:
   self.methodB()

If you are in the situation where you have overridden methods, you will need to specify the ancestors:

class C(A, B):
    def methodA(self):
        if whatever:
            A.methodA(self)
        else:
            B.methodA(self)

answered May 20, 2012 at 8:23

Daniel Roseman

602k68 gold badges910 silver badges923 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Calling parent class with multiple inheritance in python

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related