[Python-Dev] SWIG and rlcompleter

[Timothy Fitz]

On 8/16/05, Raymond Hettinger <raymond.hettinger at verizon.net> wrote:
> -0  The behavior of dir() already a bit magical.  Python is much simpler
> to comprehend if we have direct relationships like dir() and vars()
> corresponding as closely as possible to the object's dictionary.  If
> someone injects non-strings into an attribute dictionary, why should
> dir() hide that fact?

Indeed, there seem to be two camps, those who want dir to reflect __dict__
and those who want dir to reflect attributes of an object. It seems to
me that those who want dir to reflect __dict__ should just use
__dict__ in the first place.

However, in the case of dir handling non-strings, should dir handle
non-valid identifiers as well, that is to say that while
foo.__dict__[2] = ... is an obvious case what about foo.__dict__["1"]
?

Right now the documentation says that it returns "attributes", and I
would not consider non-strings to be attributes, so either the
documentation or the implementation should rectify this disagreement.