Modifying builtin type behaviour

[Andrew Bennetts]

On Tue, Feb 17, 2004 at 05:17:49PM +0100, Gerrit wrote:
> Jean-S?bastien Bolduc wrote:
> > I'm afraid this is a silly question, to which I know the answer
> > already. But let me ask anyway...
> > 
> > In Python, is there a way to modify a builtin type's methods? for
> > instance, modifying int.__add__ to behave as multiplication, I would
> > obtain 2+5 == 10. I emphasize that I don't want to modify the Python
> > source, but change the types behaviour _from within Python_.
> 
> Why?

Yes, why?  There's a decent chance you can do what you want without
modifying builtin types.

> > Help would be appreciated!
> 
> I'm almost sure it isn't possible...

Anything is possible, given sufficient quantities of evil:

    http://www.intarweb.us:8080/evil/intrinsics.c
    http://www.intarweb.us:8080/evil/intrinsics_example.py
    http://www.intarweb.us:8080/PyCon/intrinsics-lightning-0.xhtml
    
-Andrew.