bound vs unbound functions

[Michael Tobis]

I'm trying to do metaprogramming. I'm sure I've got this all wrong
wrong wrong, but somehow my approach hasn't yet hit a brick wall.

Anyway, I'd like to dynamically add a method to an instance at
instantiation time. Something like

######
In [71]: class quux(object):
....:     def __init__(self,stuff):
....:         template = "def foo(self,b): print b + %s" % stuff
....:         exec(template)
....:         self.bazz = foo
....:


In [72]: q = quux(5)

In [73]: q.bazz(4)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
TypeError                                 Traceback (most recent call
last)

/Users/tobis/PyNSol/<console>

TypeError: foo() takes exactly 2 arguments (1 given)

In [74]: q.bazz("not much",4)
9
########

So the straightforward question is why, even though bazz is a method of
class quux, it doesn't have that extra call parameter 'self'. Is this a
problem? If I actually need a reference to self is it OK to do:

In [76]: q.bazz(q,4)

?

The more vague question is why do people despise 'exec', and how should
I do this sort of thing instead?

mt

PS - any idea how to get past google's stupid formatting these days? I
thought they were supposed to like python, but they just ignore leading
blanks.