On Tue, 4 Jan 2005 10:28:03 -0800, Guido van Rossum <gvanrossum@gmail.com> wrote:
In my blog I wrote:
Let's get rid of unbound methods. When class C defines a method f, C.f should just return the function object, not an unbound method that behaves almost, but not quite, the same as that function object. The extra type checking on the first argument that unbound methods are supposed to provide is not useful in practice (I can't remember that it ever caught a bug in my code) and sometimes you have to work around it; it complicates function attribute access; and the overloading of unbound and bound methods on the same object type is confusing. Also, the type checking offered is wrong, because it checks for subclassing rather than for duck typing.
This would make pickling (or any serialization mechanism) of `Class.method' based on name next to impossible. Right now, with the appropriate support, this works: >>> import pickle >>> class Foo: ... def bar(self): pass ... >>> pickle.loads(pickle.dumps(Foo.bar)) <unbound method Foo.bar> >>> I don't see how it could if Foo.bar were just a function object. Jp