What exactly are bound methods?

[Skip Montanaro]

    Ben> Although I see lots of references to them in various documentation,
    Ben> I can't find a decent explanation of exactly what they are. I'm
    Ben> guessing that it's a reference to a method that remembers which
    Ben> object it came from, and that when it's called, it passes that
    Ben> object as the first parameter (which would conventionally be
    Ben> 'self'). Is this correct?

When you define a class like so:

    class foo:
        def bar(self):
            pass

foo.bar is an unbound method.  Binding the method associates it with a
particular instance.  You can think of a bound method as currying the
instance object with the unbound method.  For info on currying, check the
Python Cookbook:

    http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/52549

Skip