[Python-ideas] Should we improve `dir`?

[Chris Angelico]

On Sun, Sep 15, 2013 at 11:47 AM, Mark Janssen
<dreamingforward at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Right, this is one of the behavioural differences between classes and
>> instances, and, as far as I am aware, it isn't an accident.
>
> In fact, I'd argue that is a critical distinction.  A language
> definition has to help enforce this distinction, otherwise confusion
> abounds.
>
>> If introspection tools want to show all the operations available *on the
>> class*, then they need to include "dir(type(cls))" as well.
>
> If users want to find the operations available "on the class", they
> should learn Python.

The other day I was looking for __bases__ but couldn't remember what
it was called. I did the obvious thing and used IDLE's tab
completion... and it wasn't there. There definitely is value in having
those sorts of things be in dir().

ChrisA