[Python-Dev] __dir__, part 2

[Guido van Rossum]

On 11/10/06, Fredrik Lundh <fredrik at pythonware.com> wrote:
> Guido van Rossum wrote:
>
> > No objection on targetting 2.6 if other developers agree. Seems this
> > is well under way. good work!
>
> given that dir() is used extensively by introspection tools, I'm
> not sure I'm positive to a __dir__ that *overrides* the standard
> dir() behaviour.  *adding* to the default dir() list is okay, re-
> placing it is a lot more questionable.

I think that ought to go into the guidlines for what's an acceptable
__dir__ implementation. We don't try to stop people from overriding
__add__ as subtraction either.

> (what about vars(), btw?)

Interesting question! Right now vars() and dir() don't seem to use the
same set of keys; e.g.:

>>> class C: pass
...
>>> c = C()
>>> c.foo = 42
>>> vars(c)
{'foo': 42}
>>> dir(c)
['__doc__', '__module__', 'foo']
>>>

It makes some sense for vars(x) to return something like

  dict((name, getattr(x, name)) for name in dir(x) if hasattr(x, name))

and for the following equivalence to hold between vars() and dir() without args:

  dir() == sorted(vars().keys())

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)