Python 3.1, object, and setattr()

[Steve Holden]

Ethan Furman wrote:
> Greetings!
> 
> Perhaps I woke up too early this morning, but this behaviour has me
> baffled:
> 
> Python 3.1.1 (r311:74483, Aug 17 2009, 17:02:12) [MSC v.1500 32 bit
> (Intel)] on win32
> Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
> 
> --> test = object()
> 
> --> setattr(test, 'example', 123)
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
> AttributeError: 'object' object has no attribute 'example'
> 
> Shouldn't setattr() be creating the 'example' attribute?  Any tips
> greatly appreciated!
> 
It's not just object, and it's not just the setattr() function. It's not
even just Python 3.1 for that matter! Later Python 2 implementations
have the same issue.

>>> x = 1
>>> setattr(x, 'example', 123)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: 'int' object has no attribute 'example'
>>> x.example = 123
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: 'int' object has no attribute 'example'
>>>

There are limits to what you can do with the built-in types. No matter
how hard Python tries to make them look the same, ultimately the
built-in types are implemented differently from the types you create
yourself.

For efficiency reasons the attributes of the built-ins are stored in a
different way (that's more accessible to the C implementation) than
those of the declared types.

regards
 Steve
-- 
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