Class Methods Vs Any Other Callable

[Arnaud Delobelle]

Bruno Desthuilliers <bruno.42.desthuilliers at websiteburo.invalid> writes:

> FWIW, I wonder why the BDFL choosed to implement __new__ as a
> staticmethod - there are probably some pretty good reasons, but not
> knowing them, it looks like __new__ would have been a perfect
> candidate for a classmethod.
>
> So far, the only reason I can think of is that making it a classmethod
> would have required the use of super(Parent, cls) to call the parent's
> class __new__, which may (or may not - never had the case) be
> problematic (any guru on this ?)

Don't know but I remember something about this in 'Unifying types and
classes'.  There it is:

    Factoid: __new__ is a static method, not a class method. I
    initially thought it would have to be a class method, and that's
    why I added the classmethod primitive. Unfortunately, with class
    methods, upcalls don't work right in this case, so I had to make
    it a static method with an explicit class as its first
    argument. Ironically, there are now no known uses for class
    methods in the Python distribution (other than in the test
    suite). I might even get rid of classmethod in a future release if
    no good use for it can be found!

(http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.2/descrintro/)

I don't have the time to try to figure it out :(

-- 
Arnaud