[Python-3000] A plus for naked unbound methods

[Mark Seaborn]

Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:

> I have seen a couple of objections to leaving unbound methods naked (as 
> functions) when retrieved in 3.0.  Here is a plus.
>
> A c.l.p poster reported that 2.6 broke his code because the addition of 
> default rich comparisons to object turned tests like hassattr(ob, 
> '__lt__') from False to True.

For the record, the post is:
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2008-October/510540.html

> The obvious fix ob.__lt__ == object.__lt__ does not work because
> wrapping makes it always False, even when conceptually true.  In
> 3.0, that equality test works.  (I pointed him to 'object' in
> repr(ob.__lt__) as a workaround.  Others posted others.)

Assuming ob is an instance object, ob.__lt__ will give you a bound
method (taking 1 argument) which you would never expect to compare as
equal to object.__lt__ (taking 2 arguments).  So the presence or
absence of unbound methods makes no difference here.

Mark