Recently, I saw someone talking about a __new__ method and read an article about it. ( I always used __init__ before and never knew about __new__) The article explained that the __new__ method was called when an object is created and the __init__ method will be called to initialize the object.
What is the difference? What does it mean to initialize the object?
In python EVERYTHING is an object so when you create a class, python create a class object. Assume this code:
class Example:
def __init__(self) -> None:
self.var = 0
python create a Example class object. In this object there are some methods such as __init__ and __new__. Then assume this peace of code:
obj = Example()
in runtime python is calling the __new__ method on Example class object and pass the istance (the __new__ result) to the __init__ method. And now you have your object.
As mentioned in link below and in my experience, we always use __init__ to define class constructor, but I rarely have seen that anyone uses __new__ .
Another point that is explained is that use __new__ if you're subclassing an immutable type like str, int, Unicode, or tuple. Immutable objects are Objects that wont change during program running.
