[Python-Dev] towards a faster Python

[Barry Warsaw]

On Tue, 2003-06-10 at 10:36, Neil Schemenauer wrote:

> What I mean by reassigning builtins is:
> 
>     import __builtin__
>     __builtin__.int = something

IMO the only defensible reason to do that is for debugging purposes. 
Although I haven't had a need for this in many years, it has
occasionally been useful to reassign built-in open() to catch or log a
particular file action.  (IIRC, the last time I did this was before the
resulting IOError included the filename argument.)

A warning is fine -- even desirable.  I'd want to make sure such
debugging hacks didn't make it into a release. :)

-Barry