Pythonic Way to Initialize (Complex) Static Data Members

Question

I have a class with a complex data member that I want to keep \"static\". I want to initialize it once, using a function. How Pythonic is something like this:

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Answer 1

The statement data_member = generate_data() will be executed only once, when class coo: ... is executed. In majority of cases class statements occur at module level and are executed when module is imported. So data_member = generate_data() will be executed only once when you import module with class coo for the first time.

All instances of coo class will share data_member and can access it by writing coo.data_member. Any changes made to coo.data_member will be immediately visible by any coo instance. An instance can have its own data_member attribute. This attribute can be set by typing self.data_member = ... and will be visible only to that instance. The "static" data_member can still be accessed by typing coo.data_member.