I think you may have misunderstood the purpose of vars(). It isn't to be a slightly different version of dir(), instead vars() should return the object's namespace. Not a copy of the namespace, but the actual namespace used by the object.

This is how vars() currently works:

py> class X: ... pass ... py> obj = X() py> ns = vars(obj) py> ns['spam'] = 999 py> obj.spam 999

If vars() can return a modified copy of the namespace, that will break this functionality.

This is not always true, e.g. for classes vars() returns a mappingproxy.

From Doc:

"Objects such as modules and instances have an updateable __dict__ attribute; however, other objects may have write restrictions on their __dict__ attributes (for example, classes use a types.MappingProxyType to prevent direct dictionary updates)." https://docs.python.org/3.6/library/functions.html#vars But you're right: it's misleading to return a RW mapping wich is a fake namespace... In the above examples you could just return a mappingproxy. If you want to support this feature you could use composition: class C: def __init__(self): self.publicns = {} # or: self.proxyattr = MyProxyClass() def __vars__(self): return self.publicns # or: return self.proxyattr.__dict__ This namespace will be updateable, and it let you distinguish between the namespace you want to expose to your clients without compromosing the real one. Of course, the real one could always be accessible via __dict__ (if present).