Automating creation of class instances in python for an undetermined amount of instances

Question

I am creating a turn-based game, where the player can create units at any time during his/her turn.
A shortened version of the Unit class is:

class Unit(object):
    def __init__(self, xpos, ypos, color = 'red'):
        self.xpos = xpos
        self.ypos = ypos
        self.color = color

And I was wondering if there was a way to automate creation of instances of this class, without
hardcoding something like:

unit1 = Unit(1, 1)
unit2 = Unit(1, 2)
...
unitn = Unit(1, 2)

So that I could just make a function such as create_unit(xpos, ypos, color = 'red')
and I wouldn't have to worry about hardcoding every unit spot avaliable

Thanks in advance!

P.S. I'm using Python 2.7

That create_unit function would do exactly the same thing the Unit constructor already does, so what would be the point? — abarnert
– abarnert, Commented Nov 26, 2014 at 2:20
Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure what you really want here is not n separate variables, but one variable with a list of n objects—e.g., units = [Unit(1, 2) for _ in range(n)]. See Keep data out of your variable names and Why you don't want to dynamically create variables. — abarnert
– abarnert, Commented Nov 26, 2014 at 2:20

user4266696 · Accepted Answer · 2014-11-26 02:21:53Z

2

Whenever you see the pattern: unit1, unit2, ... , unitN, you should probably be using a list to store them. If you want to create a new unit, just append a new unit to the list. Try this example:

units = []

# Your Unit constructor handles the creation of a new unit:
# No need to create a special function for that.
units.append(Unit(1,1))
units.append(Unit(1,2))

# etc...

print(units)

answered Nov 26, 2014 at 2:21

user4266696

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