[Python-Dev] Initialization of __builtins__

[Vinay Sajip]

>I'm not top-posting, but gmane is giving me a hard time :-(

In the py3k branch, logging has the line

_unicode = 'unicode' in dir(__builtins__)

to determine the existence of Unicode support. The code in trunk, being 1.5.2
compatible, used

hasattr(types, 'UnicodeType')

I wanted to eliminate the types import and modernise the trunk code a bit, so I
copied the py3k line to the trunk version of logging. It didn't work as
expected! So I added the line

print dir(__builtins__)

in logging fairly early on (though not the very first line - just after the

__date__ = ...

line. Here's what I got with 2.7a0 and 2.6.1:

Python 2.7a0 (trunk:75292M, Oct  9 2009, 09:21:05) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)]
on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import logging
['__class__', '__cmp__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
 '__doc__', '__eq__', '__format__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__',
 '__getitem__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__iter__', '__le__',
 '__len__', '__lt__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__',
 '__repr__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__sizeof__', '__str__',
 '__subclasshook__', 'clear', 'copy', 'fromkeys', 'get', 'has_key', 'items',
 'iteritems', 'iterkeys', 'itervalues', 'keys', 'pop', 'popitem',
 'setdefault', 'update', 'values']
>>>

ActivePython 2.6.1.1 (ActiveState Software Inc.) based on
Python 2.6.1 (r261:67515, Dec  5 2008, 13:58:38) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)]
on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import logging
['__class__', '__cmp__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
 '__doc__', '__eq__', '__format__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__',
 '__getitem__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__iter__', '__le__',
 '__len__', '__lt__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__',
 '__repr__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__sizeof__', '__str__',
 '__subclasshook__', 'clear', 'copy', 'fromkeys', 'get', 'has_key', 'items',
 'iteritems', 'iterkeys', 'itervalues', 'keys', 'pop', 'popitem',
 'setdefault', 'update', 'values']
>>>

However, if I just do 

dir(__builtins__)

in the interactive prompt, I get the whole shebang.

Excuse my ignorance, but how come?

Regards,

Vinay Sajip