[Python-Dev] Semantic of isinstance
Phillip J. Eby
pje at telecommunity.com
Tue Jun 27 15:48:58 CEST 2006
At 10:13 PM 6/26/2006 -0700, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>On 6/26/06, Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
>>Phillip J. Eby wrote:
>>
>> > It's not inconsistent - isinstance() checks __class__ in *addition* to
>> > type() in order to allow proxying tricks like lying about your
>> > __class__.
>>
>>If this is a deliberate feature, it's a bit patchy, because
>>it means the proxy can't lie about *not* being an instance
>>of its real type.
>>
>>Perhaps Guido could clarify how much lying a proxy is
>>supposed to be able to get away with?
>
>Sorry, I don't remember all the constraints. Read the code and weep.
>This should be revisited for Py3k. The code became convoluted out of
>some needs in Zope; I can't remember if it was Zope 2 or Zope 3 that
>needed this (probably both) and I can't remember the specific
>situation where it was needed.
It was Zope 3 security proxies, although *any* proxy type benefits. The
idea was to make proxy objects be able to lie about their __class__ and be
believed by isinstance(). However, there was no requirement that
isinstance(ob, Proxy) return False, so that's not implemented. And lying
about __bases__ appears to only be allowed for things that aren't types.
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