__getattr__ and other customization methods

[Brian Quinlan]

Is there any reason why getattr, when called on an instance, should call
that instance's __getattr__ method for other customization methods
(methods starting with __)? 

I ask because there are clear advantages in not doing so i.e it prevents
potential infinite loop problems when used for proxying, potential
problems with the return type of __repr__, etc [1]. 

I would imagine that there isn't a lot of code out there that depends on
receiving __getattr__ calls for customization methods. And there is a
lot of code that has to specifically defend against it. So what do you
think? Time for a PEP?

[1] As a concrete example, both of these problems occur when doing a
dir() or print on a PyXSL SOAPProxy instance (I'll submit the fix
later).