"my brain hurts" or is isinstance broken?

[David Mertz, Ph.D.]

|>    if isinstance(source, type) or isinstance(source, types.ClassType)
|>        return source()
|>    else:
|>        return copy.copy( source )
|that is exactly what i did. but i dont like this solution cause
|as i told before it is rather implicit than explicit.

FWIW, I faced much the same sort of problem answering these niggly
questions across Python versions, and old- and new-style classes.  While
I can't promise I have the final and best solutions to such questions, I
collected a bunch of (mostly binary) functions together in my
gnosis.util.introspect module.

The package encompassing introspect.py can be found from:

    http://gnosis.cx/download/Gnosis_XML_Util.ANNOUNCE

Btw. introspect.py works perfectly well in Python 1.5.1 through 2.2
(with just a slight bit of version checking involved).

I welcome any suggestions on what other helper functions might be useful
in answer these introspective questions.  I'd love to include more; and
I'd especially love to have a well-known module (like mine :-)) that
collected the best answers in one place.

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