Assigning to self.__class__

[Terry Reedy]

"Paul McGuire" <ptmcg at austin.rr._bogus_.com> wrote in message 
news:_G%Bf.1219$jO.730 at tornado.texas.rr.com...
>I have some places in pyparsing where I've found that the most
> straightforward way to adjust an instance's behavior is to change its 
> class.
> I do this by assigning to self.__class__, and things all work fine.
>
> (Converting to use of __new__ is not an option - in one case, the change 
> is
> temporary, and before the end of the function, I change it back again.)
>
> Any comments on this practice?  Is this intended capability for Python
> objects, or am I taking advantage of a fortuitous accident, which may get
> undone at a future time?

Very little if any of the new class stuff is accidental.  As I remember, 
.__class__ was originally read-only and was intentionally changed when 
practical use cases for rewriting it were developed and presented with a 
request for change.  Though I could be wrong, I would comfortably use this 
feature myself.

Terry J. Reedy