Why do operators and methods of built-in types differ

[Scott David Daniels]

Csaba Hoch wrote:
> if I write the following:
>    >>> 1+1
>    2
> it seems to be exactly equivalent to this:
>    >>> (1).__add__(1)
>    2 
> However, if I write invalid code and try to add a list to an int, the
> errors will be different: ....
As has been explained, binary operators are trickier than the above
seems to show.  Here is how to get the full behavior:
     >>> import operator
     >>> operator.add(1,[])
     Traceback (most recent call last):
       File "<pyshell#12>", line 1, in <module>
         operator.add(1,[])
     TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'int' and 'list'


--Scott David Daniels
Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org