Operator Overloading

[Sebastien Boisgerault]

I wonder if the following quotation from the Python Reference Manual 
(release 2.3.3) about operator overloading is true :

"For example, if a class defines a method named __getitem__(), and x
is
an instance of this class, then x[i] is equivalent to
x.__getitem__(i)"

Consider the following code:

>>> from Numeric import *
>>> a = array([0.5])
>>> a
array([ 0.5])
>>> from Numeric import *
>>> a = array([0.5])
>>> a[0]
0.5

but

>>> a.__getitem__(0)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
AttributeError: __getitem__

I probably understand why the call to __getitem__: there is no
__dict__ attribute in the variable a and not even a __class__
attribute to find what
the class of the variable a is:

>>> a.__dict__
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
AttributeError: __dict__
>>> a.__class__
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
AttributeError: __class__

I didn't know that you could have an instance without a __class__
attribute ... Anyway, if the __class__ attribute was defined, I guess
that the call to a.__getitem__(0) would succeed because "__getitem__"
belongs to the __dict__
of the type of a.

>>> "__getitem__" in type(a).__dict__
True

But then, why does the call to a[0] succeed ? It should be exactly
equivalent
to a.__getitem__[0], right ?