modifying a standard module? (was: Re: tarfile : read from a socket?)

[Matt Wheeler]

On 11 February 2016 at 17:10, Ulli Horlacher
<framstag at rus.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote:
>
> Ulli Horlacher <framstag at rus.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote:
> As a hack, I modified the standard library module tarfile.py:
>
> root at diaspora:/usr/lib/python2.7# vv -d
> --- ./.versions/tarfile.py~1~   2015-06-22 21:59:27.000000000 +0200
> +++ tarfile.py  2016-02-11 18:01:50.185555952 +0100
> @@ -2045,6 +2045,7 @@
>                  directories.append(tarinfo)
>                  tarinfo = copy.copy(tarinfo)
>                  tarinfo.mode = 0700
> +            print('untar "%s"' % tarinfo.name)
>              self.extract(tarinfo, path)
>
>          # Reverse sort directories.
>
>
> This gives me exact the output I want :-)
>
> BUT I want to distribute my program and all others will not see the tar
> extracting information.
>
> Now my question:
>
> How can I substitute the standard module function tarfile.extractall() with
> my own function?

import tarfile
def new_extractall(self, *args, **kwargs):
    print("I am a function. Woohoo!")

tarfile.TarFile.extractall = new_extractall

But bear in mind that that will change tarfile.extractall for every
single module that imports it within the same python process. Is that
really what you want?


Is there a reason you can't subclass TarFile as others have suggested?

Perhaps even this is enough:

class NoisyTarFile(TarFile):
    """untested, sorry"""
    def extract(self, member, *args, **kwargs):
        print('extracting "%s"' % member.name)
        super(NoisyTarFile, self).extract(member, *args, **kwargs)

As the very next step after your print in extractall is a call to
extract anyway?


If you must patch the standard library tarfile module then I would
suggest patching it to have an extra, default False, argument to
enable your printing behaviour, so you don't risk messing up anyone
else's use of it.


-- 
Matt Wheeler
http://funkyh.at