See the two threads started in python-dev by Tomer Filiba on (according to my clock) July 6, 2006 and October 6, 2006, both have __dir__ in the subject. - Josiah Giovanni Bajo <rasky@develer.com> wrote:

Hello,

I could not find a PEP for __dir__. I was thinking today that if __dir__ was added, I would find it useful if modules implemented it by returning __all__ (when __all__ is defined). Or even better, to return the same names that would be imported by a star-import (so, if __all__ is not defined, all names which do not start with '_').

This wouldn't prevent introspection tools to use mod.__dict__ to still access the module's global dictionary, of course. But it would allow module's authors to more clearly document the module's public API. -- Giovanni Bajo

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