In the following program I don't understand the staticmethod or what is has to do with Critter.total. From what I can see, total is a class attribute and Critter.total is accessed from the __init__ constructor method. Thanks for any and all replies.
# Classy Critter
# Demonstrates class attributes and static methods
class Critter(object):
"""A virtual pet"""
total = 0
def status():
print "\nThe total number of critters is", Critter.total
status = staticmethod(status)
def __init__(self, name):
print "A critter has been born!"
self.name = name
Critter.total += 1
# main
print "Accessing the class attribute Critter.total:",
print Critter.total
print "\nCreating critters."
crit1 = Critter("critter 1")
crit2 = Critter("critter 2")
crit3 = Critter("critter 3")
Critter.status()
print "\nAccessing the class attribute through an object:",
print crit1.total
raw_input("\n\nPress the enter key to exit.")