[Python-3000] Types and classes

[Georg Brandl]

Guido van Rossum schrieb:
> On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 3:03 PM, Amaury Forgeot d'Arc <amauryfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 11:57 PM, Paul Prescod <paul at prescod.net> wrote:
>>  >  But does anyone else find it odd that the types of some things are
>>  >  classes and the classes of some things are types?
>>  >
>>  >  >>> type(socket.socket())
>>  >  <class 'socket.socket'>
>>  >  >>> type("abc")
>>  >  <type 'str'>
>>  >  >>> socket.socket().__class__
>>  >  <class 'socket.socket'>
>>  >  >>> "abc".__class__
>>  >  <type 'str'>
>>  >
>>  >  In a recent talk I could only explain this as a historical quirk. As I
>>  >  understand, it is now possible to make types that behave basically
>>  >  exactly like classes and classes that behave exactly like types. Is
>>  >  there any important difference between them anymore?
>>
>>  I can find one difference:
>>  - types are written in C
>>  - classes are written in Python
>>
>>  and there is a difference in behaviour:
>>  most types don't have a writable __dict__, and you cannot add members.
>>  classes are more flexible.
> 
> That's more correctly described as the difference between built-in
> types/classes and user-defined types/classes.
> 
> I think it's still just a historical quirk; maybe we should bite the
> bullet and fix this in py3k. (Still, 'type' and 'class' will both be
> part of the language, one as a built-in function and metaclass, the
> other as a keyword.)

+1 on the repr() change (to "class", preferably). That's exactly the kind
of simplification that Py3k is intended to make.

Georg

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