2009/7/14 Dino Viehland <di...@microsoft.com>: > Is this just a bug in CPython not updating whether __new__ has been > defined? Or is there something that makes this behavior expected which I’m > just missing?
There's a wonderful comment about this in typeobject.c: /* You may wonder why object.__new__() only complains about arguments when object.__init__() is not overridden, and vice versa. Consider the use cases: 1. When neither is overridden, we want to hear complaints about excess (i.e., any) arguments, since their presence could indicate there's a bug. 2. When defining an Immutable type, we are likely to override only __new__(), since __init__() is called too late to initialize an Immutable object. Since __new__() defines the signature for the type, it would be a pain to have to override __init__() just to stop it from complaining about excess arguments. 3. When defining a Mutable type, we are likely to override only __init__(). So here the converse reasoning applies: we don't want to have to override __new__() just to stop it from complaining. 4. When __init__() is overridden, and the subclass __init__() calls object.__init__(), the latter should complain about excess arguments; ditto for __new__(). Use cases 2 and 3 make it unattractive to unconditionally check for excess arguments. The best solution that addresses all four use cases is as follows: __init__() complains about excess arguments unless __new__() is overridden and __init__() is not overridden (IOW, if __init__() is overridden or __new__() is not overridden); symmetrically, __new__() complains about excess arguments unless __init__() is overridden and __new__() is not overridden (IOW, if __new__() is overridden or __init__() is not overridden). However, for backwards compatibility, this breaks too much code. Therefore, in 2.6, we'll *warn* about excess arguments when both methods are overridden; for all other cases we'll use the above rules. */ -- Regards, Benjamin _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com