Why does this class not require the __init__() method? This example is from the constants section of the Et Cetera lecture

Question

class Cat:
    MEOWS = 3

def meow(self):
    for _ in range(Cat.MEOWS):
        print("meow")


cat = Cat()
cat.meow()

Answer 1

the __init__() method is primarily used to create class objects with different attribute values. Since you are hard coding the attribute MEOWS=3 for every class instance, you don't need it.

Suppose you want to define the number of meows a cat makes. Then you need to create the MEOWS attribute in __init__() (and modify the meow() method to use the self.MEOWS value). See below for an example:

class Cat():
    def __init__(self, n_meows):
        self.MEOWS = n_meows

    def meow(self):
        for _ in range(self.MEOWS):
            print("meow")
        print('*****')
        
cat3 = Cat(3) 
cat3.meow()

cat5 = Cat(5) 
cat5.meow()

Answer 2

The MEOWS attribute is a class-level attribute and is shared among all instances of the class. The meow method also does not require any instance-level data, as it only operates on the class-level MEOWS attribute. Thus, the init function is not necessary in this case.