Id of methods

[Chris Angelico]

On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 2:48 PM, Emeka <emekamicro at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am trying to see if I could get more of Python without being insane.

Oh, I thought insanity was a prerequisite... anyway.

> print Boo.__dict__
>
> {'__module__': '__main__', 'ball': <function ball at 0x286e9b0>, 'daf':
> <function daf at 0x286e938>, '__dict__ ......}
>
> print  hex(id(Boo.daf))
> 0x27de5a0
>
> My question is why is it that the id of Boo.daf  is different from daf's hex
> value in the above dict?

Take no notice of the exact value of id(). It is an opaque value that
shouldn't be relied upon for anything.

That said, though, I tried your example in my two Windows Pythons,
2.6.5 and 3.2; in 3.2, the behavior is most like what you seem to be
accepting:

>>> Boo.__dict__
dict_proxy({'__module__': '__main__', 'ball': <function ball at
0x00FCBCD8>, 'daf': <function daf at 0x00FCBC90>, '__dict__':
<attribute '__dict__' of 'Boo' objects>, '__weakref__': <attribute
'__weakref__' of 'Boo' objects>, '__doc__': None, '__init__':
<function __init__ at 0x00FCBC48>})
>>> hex(id(Boo.daf))
'0xfcbc90'
>>> Boo.daf
<function daf at 0x00FCBC90>

Same number everywhere. But 2.6.5 has a difference that might give you a hint:

>>> print Boo.__dict__
{'__module__': '__main__', 'ball': <function ball at 0x011BDC70>,
'daf': <function daf at 0x011BDC30>, '__dict__': <attribute '__dict__'
of 'Boo' objects>, '__weakref__': <attribute '__weakref__' of 'Boo'
objects>, '__doc__': None, '__init__': <function __init__ at
0x011BDBB0>}
>>> Boo.daf
<unbound method Boo.daf>

daf is not a function, it's a special object for an unbound method.
The exact identity of it is not necessarily useful; and buried inside
it is the actual function that you defined:

>>> hex(id(Boo.daf))
'0x11b5c10'
>>> hex(id(Boo.daf.im_func))
'0x11bdc30'

And that seems to be the number that's given in the repr().

But mainly, don't rely on id() for anything beyond uniqueness against
all current objects.

ChrisA