Why has 'dir()' changed in Python 2.2?

[Dr. David Mertz]

Me, previously:
|> I just noticed a change in Python 2.2... that turns out to break my
|> [xml_pickle] module.  It shouldn't be hard to fix (although I *do* have
|> a decision to ponder about the best fix)

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote previously:
|I don't know what you were using it for exactly, but chances
|are good you should be looking at object.__dict__.keys() instead (which
|is all dir() often did before 2.2).

The timbot, as always, can peer through the surface words on the Usenet
into my deepest, dark thoughts.  The obj.__dict__.keys() is probably
what I'll change it to, which should restore the old behavior.  As the
name suggests, the [xml_pickle] module serializes Python objects to an
XML format... so dir() was a convenient shortcut for asking "what's this
object got?"

I probably should have known better, and -do- vaguely recall some
discussion about dir() on c.l.py around the time 2.2 alphas were coming
out.  The thing I want to think about is whether I actually *want* any
of the extra information that dir() gives me; for example, maybe the
docstring.

Do I understand the new behavior correctly in thinking that the
following function is equivalent to dir(), at least for old-style class
instances:

    def dir2(o):
        lst = o.__dict__.keys()
        lst.extend(o.__class__.__dict__.keys())
        return lst

Or is there something else thrown in there that this overlooks?

Yours, David...

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