Object and Class Exploration

[Alex Martelli]

"Jason Joy" <kyroraz at usa.net> wrote in message
news:mailman.988938787.13378.python-list at python.org...
"""
If I have an object (or a instance of a class) ...
A = CLASS(FOO)

is there a way to do a loop such that I can see all the properties (or
everything def'd) within A?
"""

Within A, or within its class, or...?


"""
Example:
def Class(bar):
"""

You mean Class is a *function* that takes argument bar?
Or is it a *class* inheriting from class bar, in which
case you would write

class Class(bar):

...?


"""
   def a:
      ## Stuff here
   def b:
      ## Stuff Here

Result:
['a, b']
"""

If Class is indeed a function it IS a hard problem to
find out all the 'def' statement it will use to define
local functions in a given run -- it may depend on
the arguments, and a general solution may be as hard
as solving the halting problem, I think.

If Class is a class instead, then dir(Class) will
contain all of its methods's names as well as other
things such as '__doc__' for its docstring &c.  You
may filter dir(Class) to eliminate all names with a
leading underscore, which are private or magical:

[x for x in dir(Class) if not x.startswith('_')]

or, of course

def normal_name(x):
    return not x.startswith('_')
filter(normal_name, dir(Class))


If you have an object O that is an instance of
Class, O.__class__ will be a reference to the
Class object.


Note that this does *NOT* account for inherited
attributes and methods...!  It takes a bit more
effort if you also want those.


Alex