Extending the dict class

[chosechu]

Duncan Booth wrote:
> No, you weren't able to extend the builtin dict class nor touch any its
> constructor.

Yes, sorry. Forgot the negation.

> All you did was to create a subclass with its own constructor and hide the
> name for the builtin dictionary type. The original type was still unchanged
> as you can see since anything which constructed a dictionary without using
> the name you had overwritten still got the original type.
>
> If you had looked at type(dict()) and type({}) after your subclassing, you
> would see that they are different types.

... which prompted my question.

And prompts yet another one: seems like it
is not possible with Python to modify behaviour
for base classes without recompiling the
interpreter. Forgive me for asking what must
surely have been asked already, but are there
plans to implement something like that,
<teasing>like Ruby</teasing>?

I would not feel too safe navigating in a source
where base object behaviour might have been
re-defined, but it sure is a powerful way of
adding behaviour to third-party code which you
may not have possibility to modify.