Python dataclasses and __slots__
Hello, blog! I was learning Binary Search Trees (BST) from Scott Barrett's Python DSA Course [2] and was using the following code to define a node. I got ChatGPT to teach me about Binary Search Trees and it generated the following code: Now, I was curious what this @dataclass annotation with 'slots=True' argument is. Looking into this, I learned that there is a 'dataclasses' module in the standard Python library (3.7+). '@dataclass' is a decorator function that lives inside that module. You use it as `@dataclass' on top of a class definition. It modifies the class to automatically generate methods like '__init__' , '__repr__', '__eq__', etc. Dataclasses As mentioned above, 'dataclasses' are a python feature (3.7+) that automatically generate boilerplate code for classes that primarily store data. For example, if you're creating a game, then the Hero class would look like the following: Using @dataclass annotation, you ...
