confusion on semantics of code

[usercat123]

Hello,

I am working through a tutorial and lack the foundations to understand the following code

class NodeVisitor(object):
    def visit(self, node):
        method_name = 'visit_' + type(node).__name__
        visitor = getattr(self, method_name, self.generic_visit)
        return visitor(node)

Can someone tell me what the visit method does? Many thanks!

[Gribouillis]

I guess you found this by working with the ast module. What the function does is this (pseudopseudocode)

def visit(self, node):
    get the name of the type of the node, for example 'foo'
    if self has a method named 'visit_foo':
        return self.visit_foo(node)
    else:
        return self.generic_visit(node)

[usercat123]

Yes, I was working with the AST module. Thanks :)