Operator Overloading

[Sebastien Boisgerault]

Peter Maas <peter at somewhere.com> wrote in message news:<co48s1$r1f$1 at swifty.westend.com>...
> Sebastien Boisgerault schrieb:
> > I wonder if the following quotation from the Python Reference Manual 
> > (release 2.3.3) about operator overloading is true :
> > 
> > "For example, if a class defines a method named __getitem__(), and x
> > is an instance of this class, then x[i] is equivalent to
> > x.__getitem__(i)"
>  [...]
> >>>>from Numeric import *
> >>>>a = array([0.5])
> >>>>a[0]
> > 
> > 0.5
> > 
> > but
> > 
> > 
> >>>>a.__getitem__(0)
> > 
> > Traceback (most recent call last):
> >   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> > AttributeError: __getitem__
> 
> The quotation above is true. Short form:
> 
> IF __getitem__ in dict THEN [] works.

Not exactly the same assertion: 
replace "__getitem__ in dict" by "__getitem__ in the class dict" 
and more importantly "[] works" by "[] and __getitem__" are *equivalent*.

Here, "__getitem__" does belongs to type(a).__dict__,
so "[]" and "__getitem__" should work exactly the same 
according to the reference, but they don't.

> [...]
> but this is not what the Python Reference Manual says. Im not a
> Numeric expert but AFAIK Numeric arrays are basically C arrays
> having [] intrinsically so there's no need no deliver it via
> __getitem__.

I would buy your argument if I couldn't find the "__getitem__" method.
But it does exist ! Except that it is hidden is the class __dict__ and
apparently cannot be recovered from the instance.__getitem__ call ...
 
Thanks for your help,

SB