Obscure __getattr__ behavior

[D. Herzberg]

Hi,

while using __getattr__ in one of my programs, I stumbled
across the somewhat abscure behavior of __getattr__. Take
the following code:

class Test:
    __attributes__= []
    def __getattr__(self,name):
        print "__getattr__(",name,")"
        if name in self.__attributes__:
            print "Lookup successful"
            return self.__attributes__[name]
        raise AttributeError, "%s not found" % (name)

If you type in 

>>> t = Test()
>>> t
__getattr__( __repr__ )
<__main__.Test instance at 0x00778FA8>
>>>

When you run the code you know for sure that __getattr__ was
called with `__repr__' as a parameter; and you know for sure
that the lookup was not successfull -- so, what code is next?
Sure, it is the raise statement but for some reason it doesn't
raise anything. What makes the treatment of __repr__ special
once we are in the __getattr__ function?

Any explanations?

Gruss

Dominikus