2010/8/23 Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info>:
On Tue, 24 Aug 2010 06:50:19 am Guido van Rossum wrote:
* Is there anything that hasattr(obj, key) can or should do that can't already be done with getattr(obj, key, None)? If not, do we really need to change anything?
getattr(obj, 'key', None) returns None when obj.key exists and has the value None. The workaround is ugly.
Why do you say it's ugly? It's a short, sweet, simple two-liner:
mark = object() getattr(obj, 'key', mark) is not mark
Nothing ugly about it at all. But if somebody really objected to using a two lines, they could put it in a utility function.
That's not all, though. You still have to test it with an "if" and that gets cumbersome after a while.
I have always thought that hasattr() does what it says on the box: it tests for the *existence* of an attribute, that is, one that statically exists rather than being dynamically generated. In other words, it is a key in the instance __dict__ or is inherited from the class __dict__ or that of a superclass, or a __slot__.
Now that I know that hasattr doesn't do what I thought it does or what the name implies it does, it has little or no utility for me. In the future, I'll just write a try...except block and catch errors if the attribute doesn't exist.
Well, that's exactly what hasattr does... -- Regards, Benjamin