[Python-Dev] Dinamically set __call__ method

[Fabio Zadrozny]

On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 2:20 AM, Gregory Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz>
wrote:

> Fabio Zadrozny wrote:
>
>> can someone from python-dev give some background of why that's the way it
>> is?
>>
>
> It's because, with new-style classes, a class is also an
> instance (of class "type" or a subclass thereof). So
> without that rule, it would be ambiguous whether a dunder
> method applied to instances of a class or to the class
> itself.
>
> > and if maybe it's something which python-dev would consider worth
>
>> changing in the future -- not sure how much could break because of that
>> though
>>
>
> Something fairly fundamental that would break is classs
> instantiation! You instantiate a class by calling it, so if
> a(x) were implemented as a.__call__(x), and class C had
> a __call__ method, then C() would invoke that method
> instead of instantiating C.
>
>
Hi Gregory,

Thanks for the explanation -- it still does seem a bit surprising from an
end-user point of view, but it does make more sense now :)

Best Regards,

Fabio
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