[Python-Dev] dir() in inspect.py ? (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Mon May 21 03:36:30 CEST 2012

On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 4:55 PM, Meador Inge <meadori at gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 3:13 PM, Christian Tismer <tismer at stackless.com> wrote:

Is the usage of dir() correct in this context or is the doc right? It would be nice to add a sentence of clarification if the use of dir() is in fact the correct way to implement inspect. There is already a note in the inspect.getmembers documentation (http://docs.python.org/library/inspect.html#inspect.getmembers): """ Note getmembers() does not return metaclass attributes when the argument is a class (this behavior is inherited from the dir() function). """ In any case, open a tracker issue if you think the documentation needs to be improved or that there might be a bug. -- Meador

I have to agree with Christian that inspect.py is full of hacks and heuristics that would be fine in a module that's part of a user's app or even in a library, but stand out as brittle or outright unreliable in a stdlib module. Basically, you can't trust that inspect.py will work. I've seen various occasions (sorry, can't remember details) where some function in it outright crashed when given a slightly unusual (but not unreasonable) argument. It might be a nice project for a new contributor to improve this situation.

-- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)

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