Safe to import __builtin__ ?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:57:29 +0000, Benjamin Peterson wrote:

> mrstevegross <mrstevegross <at> gmail.com> writes:
> 
> 
>> Is it generally safe to explicitly import __builtin__ in python? That
>> is, my code reads like this:
> ...
>> 
>> It seems like it should be a safe import, but I just want to make sure.
> 
> Yes, that's fine. I'm not sure why you don't just use type(), though.

I'm not sure why you think type() is a substitute for __builtin__. Here's 
a typical use-case for __builtin__:


import __builtin__
def map(*args):  # shadow a built-in
    # pre-processing goes here
    result = __builtin__.map(*args)
    # post-processing goes here
    return result


How does type() help you?



-- 
Steven