Calculating Euclidean distance using Magic Methods in Python 3

Question

I have a code that calculates Euclidean distance for me:

class Point:
    \"\"\"A point in two-dimensional space.\"\"\"

    def __init__(self, x, y):
        se         


        

Answer 1

As has been mentioned, it may not be a good idea to use a Point class to represent vectors. It's ok in simple programs, but it can get confusing in more complex code. The usual practice is to make points immutable. But anyway...

To do this Euclidean distance operation we can "abuse" the new __matmul__ magic method. This method is invoked by the @ operator. Here's a short demo based on your code. Notice that I'm using x and y as the attributes, there's no good reason to mark them as private.

class Point:
    def __init__(self, x, y):
        self.x = x
        self.y = y

    def __repr__(self):
        return "Point({}, {})".format(self.x, self.y)

    def __add__ (self, other ):
        return Point(self.x + other.x, self.y + other.y)

    def __sub__ (self, other ):
        return Point(self.x - other.x, self.y - other.y)

    def __pow__(self, p):
        return Point(self.x ** p, self.y **p)

    def __abs__(self):
        d = self ** 2
        return (d.x + d.y) ** 0.5

    def __matmul__(self, other):
        ''' Euclidean distance between self & other '''
        return abs(self - other)

# Test

a = Point(5, 6)
b = Point(2, 2)
print(a + b)
print(a - b)
print(a @ b)

output

Point(7, 8)
Point(3, 4)
5.0