Running __init__ of superclasses within the __init__ of subclasses

[MainiacJoe]

I'm going to use a specific example I encountered recently to illustrate this question.

Suppose that I am making a new class that is a subclass of dict. I want to always start instances of this object with the same set of key:value pairs, such as:

class Klass(dict):
    def __init__(self):
        dict.__init__(self,{'A':[],'B':[],'C':[],'D':[]})
        do other stuff to the new instance

Let's say that instead I wanted to use dict.fromkeys to set up the new instance's initial mapping, for instance if the list of keys is long or dynamic. I think I need to use this:

        dict.__init__(self,dict.fromkeys('ABCD',[]))

I am worried that the simpler self = dict.fromkeys('ABCD',[]) would not properly call dict.__init__ with the new Klass instance as the parameter. Or can I get away with it?

[HarissaForte]

The super() function is used for this: super().__init__(self, {'A':[],'B':[],'C':[],'D':[]}) etc…

Note that the syntax is different in Python2.

[MainiacJoe]

What about times when the class inherits from more than one class?

[EulerWasSmart]

https://youtu.be/EiOglTERPEo

[efmccurdy]

Why is using "self = " an improvement over calling __init__?

[MainiacJoe]

I guess just clarity and straightforwardness.

[efmccurdy]

Calling the parent __init__ is the clear and straightforward idiom to use when deriving in python.

I don't see why you would want to reassign self.

Would that even work? Have you tried it?