3. Modelo de datos

3.1. Objetos, valores y tipos

Objects son la abstracción de Python para los datos. Todos los datos en un programa Python están representados por objetos o por relaciones entre objetos. (En cierto sentido y de conformidad con el modelo de Von Neumann de una «programa almacenado de computadora», el código también está representado por objetos.)

Cada objeto tiene una identidad, un tipo y un valor. La identidad de un objeto nunca cambia una vez que ha sido creado; puede pensar en ello como la dirección del objeto en la memoria. El operador “is” compara la identidad de dos objetos; la función id() retorna un número entero que representa su identidad.

CPython implementation detail: Para CPython, id(x) es la dirección de memoria donde se almacena x.

El tipo de un objeto determina las operaciones que admite el objeto (por ejemplo, «¿tiene una longitud?») y también define los posibles valores para los objetos de ese tipo. La función type() retorna el tipo de un objeto (que es un objeto en sí mismo). Al igual que su identidad, también el type de un objeto es inmutable. 1

El valor de algunos objetos puede cambiar. Se dice que los objetos cuyo valor puede cambiar son mutables; Los objetos cuyo valor no se puede modificar una vez que se crean se denominan inmutables. (El valor de un objeto contenedor inmutable que contiene una referencia a un objeto mutable puede cambiar cuando se cambia el valor de este último; sin embargo, el contenedor todavía se considera inmutable, porque la colección de objetos que contiene no se puede cambiar. Por lo tanto, la inmutabilidad no es estrictamente lo mismo que tener un valor inmutable, es más sutil). La mutabilidad de un objeto está determinada por su tipo; por ejemplo, los números, las cadenas de caracteres y las tuplas son inmutables, mientras que los diccionarios y las listas son mutables.

Los objetos nunca se destruyen explícitamente; sin embargo, cuando se vuelven inalcanzables, se pueden recolectar basura. Se permite a una implementación posponer la recolección de basura u omitirla por completo; es una cuestión de calidad de la implementación cómo se implementa la recolección de basura, siempre que no se recolecten objetos que todavía sean accesibles.

CPython implementation detail: CPython actualmente utiliza un esquema de conteo de referencias con detección retardada (opcional) de basura enlazada cíclicamente, que recolecta la mayoría de los objetos tan pronto como se vuelven inalcanzables, pero no se garantiza que recolecte basura que contenga referencias circulares. Vea la documentación del módulo gc para información sobre el control de la recolección de basura cíclica. Otras implementaciones actúan de manera diferente y CPython puede cambiar. No dependa de la finalización inmediata de los objetos cuando se vuelvan inalcanzables (por lo que siempre debe cerrar los archivos explícitamente).

Tenga en cuenta que el uso de las funciones de rastreo o depuración de la implementación puede mantener activos los objetos que normalmente serían coleccionables. También tenga en cuenta que la captura de una excepción con una sentencia “try…except” puede mantener objetos activos.

Algunos objetos contienen referencias a recursos «externos» como archivos abiertos o ventanas. Se entiende que estos recursos se liberan cuando el objeto es eliminado por el recolector de basura, pero como no se garantiza que la recolección de basura suceda, dichos objetos también proporcionan una forma explícita de liberar el recurso externo, generalmente un método close(). Se recomienda encarecidamente a los programas cerrar explícitamente dichos objetos. La declaración “try…finally” y la declaración “with” proporcionan formas convenientes de hacer esto.

Algunos objetos contienen referencias a otros objetos; estos se llaman contenedores. Ejemplos de contenedores son tuplas, listas y diccionarios. Las referencias son parte del valor de un contenedor. En la mayoría de los casos, cuando hablamos del valor de un contenedor, implicamos los valores, no las identidades de los objetos contenidos; sin embargo, cuando hablamos de la mutabilidad de un contenedor, solo se implican las identidades de los objetos contenidos inmediatamente. Entonces, si un contenedor inmutable (como una tupla) contiene una referencia a un objeto mutable, su valor cambia si se cambia ese objeto mutable.

Los tipos afectan a casi todos los aspectos del comportamiento del objeto. Incluso la importancia de la identidad del objeto se ve afectada en cierto sentido: para los tipos inmutables, las operaciones que calculan nuevos valores en realidad pueden retornar una referencia a cualquier objeto existente con el mismo tipo y valor, mientras que para los objetos mutables esto no está permitido. Por ejemplo, al hacer a = 1; b = 1, a y b puede o no referirse al mismo objeto con el valor 1, dependiendo de la implementación, pero al hacer c = []; d = [], c y d se garantiza que se refieren a dos listas vacías diferentes, únicas y recién creadas. (Tenga en cuenta que c = d = [] asigna el mismo objeto a ambos c y d.)

3.2. Jerarquía de tipos estándar

A continuación se muestra una lista de los tipos integrados en Python. Los módulos de extensión (escritos en C, Java u otros lenguajes, dependiendo de la implementación) pueden definir tipos adicionales. Las versiones futuras de Python pueden agregar tipos a la jerarquía de tipos (por ejemplo, números racionales, matrices de enteros almacenados de manera eficiente, etc.), aunque tales adiciones a menudo se proporcionarán a través de la biblioteca estándar.

Algunas de las descripciones de tipos a continuación contienen un párrafo que enumera “atributos especiales”. Estos son atributos que proporcionan acceso a la implementación y no están destinados para uso general. Su definición puede cambiar en el futuro.

None

Este tipo tiene un solo valor. Hay un solo objeto con este valor. Se accede a este objeto a través del nombre incorporado None. Se utiliza para indicar la ausencia de un valor en muchas situaciones, por ejemplo, se retorna desde funciones que no retornan nada explícitamente. Su valor de verdad es falso.

NotImplemented

Este tipo tiene un solo valor. Hay un solo objeto con este valor. Se accede a este objeto a través del nombre incorporado NotImplemented. Los métodos numéricos y los métodos de comparación enriquecidos deberían retornar este valor si no implementan la operación para los operandos proporcionados. (El intérprete intentará la operación reflejada, o alguna otra alternativa, dependiendo del operador). Su valor de verdad es verdadero.

Vea Implementar operaciones aritméticas para más detalles.

Elipsis

Este tipo tiene un solo valor. Hay un solo objeto con este valor. Se accede a este objeto a través del literal ... o el nombre incorporado Ellipsis. Su valor de verdad es verdadero.

numbers.Number

Estos son creados por literales numéricos y retornados como resultados por operadores aritméticos y funciones aritméticas integradas. Los objetos numéricos son inmutables; una vez creado su valor nunca cambia. Los números de Python están, por supuesto, fuertemente relacionados con los números matemáticos, pero están sujetos a las limitaciones de la representación numérica en las computadoras.

The string representations of the numeric classes, computed by __repr__() and __str__(), have the following properties:

• They are valid numeric literals which, when passed to their class constructor, produce an object having the value of the original numeric.

• The representation is in base 10, when possible.

• Leading zeros, possibly excepting a single zero before a decimal point, are not shown.

• Trailing zeros, possibly excepting a single zero after a decimal point, are not shown.

• A sign is shown only when the number is negative.

Python distingue entre números enteros, números de coma flotante y números complejos:

numbers.Integral

Estos representan elementos del conjunto matemático de números enteros (positivo y negativo).

Hay dos tipos de números enteros:

Enteros (int)

Estos representan números en un rango ilimitado, sujetos solo a la memoria (virtual) disponible. Para las operaciones de desplazamiento y máscara, se asume una representación binaria, y los números negativos se representan en una variante del complemento de 2 que da la ilusión de una cadena de caracteres infinita de bits con signo que se extiende hacia la izquierda.

Booleanos (bool)

Estos representan los valores de verdad Falso y Verdadero. Los dos objetos que representan los valores False y True son los únicos objetos booleanos. El tipo booleano es un subtipo del tipo entero y los valores booleanos se comportan como los valores 0 y 1 respectivamente, en casi todos los contextos, con la excepción de que cuando se convierten en una cadena de caracteres, las cadenas de caracteres "False" o "True" son retornadas respectivamente.

Las reglas para la representación de enteros están destinadas a dar la interpretación más significativa de las operaciones de cambio y máscara que involucran enteros negativos.

numbers.Real (float)

Estos representan números de punto flotante de precisión doble a nivel de máquina. Está a merced de la arquitectura de la máquina subyacente (y la implementación de C o Java) para el rango aceptado y el manejo del desbordamiento. Python no admite números de coma flotante de precisión simple; el ahorro en el uso del procesador y la memoria, que generalmente son la razón para usarlos, se ven reducidos por la sobrecarga del uso de objetos en Python, por lo que no hay razón para complicar el lenguaje con dos tipos de números de coma flotante.

numbers.Complex (complex)

Estos representan números complejos como un par de números de coma flotante de precisión doble a nivel de máquina. Se aplican las mismas advertencias que para los números de coma flotante. Las partes reales e imaginarias de un número complejo z se pueden obtener a través de los atributos de solo lectura z.real y z.imag.

Secuencias

Estos representan conjuntos ordenados finitos indexados por números no negativos. La función incorporada len() retorna el número de elementos de una secuencia. Cuando la longitud de una secuencia es n, el conjunto de índices contiene los números 0, 1, …, n-1. El elemento i de la secuencia a se selecciona mediante a[i].

Las secuencias también admiten segmentación: a[i:j] selecciona todos los elementos con índice k de modo que i <= k < j. Cuando se usa como una expresión, un segmento es una secuencia del mismo tipo. Esto implica que el conjunto de índices se vuelve a enumerar para que comience en 0.

Algunas secuencias también admiten «segmentación extendida» con un tercer parámetro «paso» : a[i:j:k] selecciona todos los elementos de a con índice x donde x = i + n*k, n >= 0 y i <= x < j.

Las secuencias se distinguen según su mutabilidad:

Secuencias inmutables

Un objeto de un tipo de secuencia inmutable no puede cambiar una vez que se crea. (Si el objeto contiene referencias a otros objetos, estos otros objetos pueden ser mutables y pueden cambiarse; sin embargo, la colección de objetos a los que hace referencia directamente un objeto inmutable no puede cambiar).

Los siguientes tipos son secuencias inmutables:

Cadenas de caracteres

Una cadena de caracteres es una secuencia de valores que representan puntos de código Unicode. Todos los puntos de código en el rango U+0000 - U+10FFFF se puede representar en una cadena de caracteres. Python no tiene un tipo char; en cambio, cada punto de código en la cadena de caracteres se representa como un objeto de cadena de caracteres con longitud 1. La función incorporada ord() convierte un punto de código de su forma de cadena de caracteres a un entero en el rango 0 - 10FFFF; la función chr() convierte un entero en el rango 0 - 10FFFF a la cadena de caracteres correspondiente de longitud 1. str.encode() se puede usar para convertir un objeto de tipo str a bytes usando la codificación de texto dada, y bytes.decode() se puede usar para lograr el caso inverso.

Tuplas

Los elementos de una tupla son objetos arbitrarios de Python. Las tuplas de dos o más elementos están formadas por listas de expresiones separadas por comas. Se puede formar una tupla de un elemento (un “singleton”) al colocar una coma en una expresión (una expresión en sí misma no crea una tupla, ya que los paréntesis deben ser utilizables para agrupar expresiones). Una tupla vacía puede estar formada por un par de paréntesis vacío.

Bytes

Un objeto de bytes es una colección inmutable. Los elementos son bytes de 8 bits, representados por enteros en el rango 0 <= x <256. Literales de bytes (como b'abc') y el constructor incorporado bytes() se puede utilizar para crear objetos de bytes. Además, los objetos de bytes se pueden decodificar en cadenas de caracteres a través del método decode().

Secuencias mutables

Las secuencias mutables se pueden cambiar después de su creación. Las anotaciones de suscripción y segmentación se pueden utilizar como el objetivo de asignaciones y declaraciones del (eliminar).

Actualmente hay dos tipos intrínsecos de secuencias mutable:

Listas

The items of a list are arbitrary Python objects. Lists are formed by placing a comma-separated list of expressions in square brackets. (Note that there are no special cases needed to form lists of length 0 or 1.)

Colecciones de bytes

Un objeto bytearray es una colección mutable. Son creados por el constructor incorporado bytearray(). Además de ser mutables (y, por lo tanto, inquebrantable), las colecciones de bytes proporcionan la misma interfaz y funcionalidad que los objetos inmutables bytes.

El módulo de extensión array proporciona un ejemplo adicional de un tipo de secuencia mutable, al igual que el módulo collections.

Tipos de conjuntos

Estos representan conjuntos finitos no ordenados de objetos únicos e inmutables. Como tal, no pueden ser indexados por ningún subscript. Sin embargo, pueden repetirse y la función incorporada len() retorna el número de elementos en un conjunto. Los usos comunes de los conjuntos son pruebas rápidas de membresía, eliminación de duplicados de una secuencia y cálculo de operaciones matemáticas como intersección, unión, diferencia y diferencia simétrica.

Para elementos del conjunto, se aplican las mismas reglas de inmutabilidad que para las claves de diccionario. Tenga en cuenta que los tipos numéricos obedecen las reglas normales para la comparación numérica: si dos números se comparan igual (por ejemplo, 1 y 1.0), solo uno de ellos puede estar contenido en un conjunto.

Actualmente hay dos tipos de conjuntos intrínsecos:

Conjuntos

Estos representan un conjunto mutable. Son creados por el constructor incorporado set() y puede ser modificado posteriormente por varios métodos, como add().

Conjuntos congelados

Estos representan un conjunto inmutable. Son creados por el constructor incorporado frozenset(). Como un conjunto congelado es inmutable y hashable, se puede usar nuevamente como un elemento de otro conjunto o como una clave de un diccionario.

Mapeos

Estos representan conjuntos finitos de objetos indexados por conjuntos de índices arbitrarios. La notación de subíndice a[k] selecciona el elemento indexado por k del mapeo a; esto se puede usar en expresiones y como el objetivo de asignaciones o declaraciones del. La función incorporada len() retorna el número de elementos en un mapeo.

Actualmente hay un único tipo de mapeo intrínseco:

Diccionarios

Estos representan conjuntos finitos de objetos indexados por valores casi arbitrarios. Los únicos tipos de valores no aceptables como claves son valores que contienen listas o diccionarios u otros tipos mutables que se comparan por valor en lugar de por identidad de objeto, la razón es que la implementación eficiente de los diccionarios requiere que el valor hash de una clave permanezca constante. Los tipos numéricos utilizados para las claves obedecen las reglas normales para la comparación numérica: si dos números se comparan igual (por ejemplo, 1 y 1.0) entonces se pueden usar indistintamente para indexar la misma entrada del diccionario.

Los diccionarios conservan el orden de inserción, lo que significa que las claves se mantendrán en el mismo orden en que se agregaron secuencialmente sobre el diccionario. Reemplazar una clave existente no cambia el orden, sin embargo, eliminar una clave y volver a insertarla la agregará al final en lugar de mantener su lugar anterior.

Los diccionarios son mutables; pueden ser creados por la notación {...} (vea la sección Despliegues de diccionario).

Los módulos de extensión dbm.ndbm y dbm.gnu proporcionan ejemplos adicionales de tipos de mapeo, al igual que el módulo collections.

Distinto en la versión 3.7: Los diccionarios no conservaban el orden de inserción en las versiones de Python anteriores a 3.6. En CPython 3.6, el orden de inserción se conserva, pero se consideró un detalle de implementación en ese momento en lugar de una garantía de idioma.

Tipos invocables

Estos son los tipos a los que la operación de llamada de función (vea la sección Invocaciones) puede ser aplicado:

Funciones definidas por el usuario

A user-defined function object is created by a function definition (see section Definiciones de funciones). It should be called with an argument list containing the same number of items as the function’s formal parameter list.

Atributos especiales:

Atributo	Significado
__doc__	El texto de documentación de la función, o None si no está disponible; no heredado por subclases.	Escribible
__name__	El nombre de la función.	Escribible
__qualname__	Las funciones qualified name. Nuevo en la versión 3.3.	Escribible
__module__	El nombre del módulo en el que se definió la función, o None si no está disponible.	Escribible
__defaults__	Una tupla que contiene valores de argumento predeterminados para aquellos argumentos que tienen valores predeterminados, o None si ningún argumento tiene un valor predeterminado.	Escribible
__code__	El objeto de código que representa el cuerpo de la función compilada.	Escribible
__globals__	Una referencia al diccionario que contiene las variables globales de la función — el espacio de nombres global del módulo en el que se definió la función.	Solo lectura
__dict__	El espacio de nombres que admite atributos de funciones arbitrarias.	Escribible
__closure__	None o una tupla de celdas que contienen enlaces para las variables libres de la función. Vea a continuación para obtener información sobre el atributo cell_contents.	Solo lectura
__annotations__	Un diccionario que contiene anotaciones de parámetros. Las claves del dict son los nombres de los parámetros, y 'return' para la anotación de retorno, si se proporciona.	Escribible
__kwdefaults__	Un diccionario que contiene valores predeterminados para parámetros de solo palabras clave.	Escribible

La mayoría de los atributos etiquetados «Escribible» verifican el tipo del valor asignado.

Function objects also support getting and setting arbitrary attributes, which can be used, for example, to attach metadata to functions. Regular attribute dot-notation is used to get and set such attributes. Note that the current implementation only supports function attributes on user-defined functions. Function attributes on built-in functions may be supported in the future.

Un objeto de celda tiene el atributo cell_contents. Esto se puede usar para obtener el valor de la celda, así como para establecer el valor.

Se puede recuperar información adicional sobre la definición de una función desde su objeto de código; Vea la descripción de los tipos internos a continuación. El tipo cell puede ser accedido en el módulo types.

Métodos de instancia

An instance method object combines a class, a class instance and any callable object (normally a user-defined function).

Special read-only attributes: __self__ is the class instance object, __func__ is the function object; __doc__ is the method’s documentation (same as __func__.__doc__); __name__ is the method name (same as __func__.__name__); __module__ is the name of the module the method was defined in, or None if unavailable.

Methods also support accessing (but not setting) the arbitrary function attributes on the underlying function object.

User-defined method objects may be created when getting an attribute of a class (perhaps via an instance of that class), if that attribute is a user-defined function object or a class method object.

When an instance method object is created by retrieving a user-defined function object from a class via one of its instances, its __self__ attribute is the instance, and the method object is said to be bound. The new method’s __func__ attribute is the original function object.

When an instance method object is created by retrieving a class method object from a class or instance, its __self__ attribute is the class itself, and its __func__ attribute is the function object underlying the class method.

When an instance method object is called, the underlying function (__func__) is called, inserting the class instance (__self__) in front of the argument list. For instance, when C is a class which contains a definition for a function f(), and x is an instance of C, calling x.f(1) is equivalent to calling C.f(x, 1).

When an instance method object is derived from a class method object, the «class instance» stored in __self__ will actually be the class itself, so that calling either x.f(1) or C.f(1) is equivalent to calling f(C,1) where f is the underlying function.

Note that the transformation from function object to instance method object happens each time the attribute is retrieved from the instance. In some cases, a fruitful optimization is to assign the attribute to a local variable and call that local variable. Also notice that this transformation only happens for user-defined functions; other callable objects (and all non-callable objects) are retrieved without transformation. It is also important to note that user-defined functions which are attributes of a class instance are not converted to bound methods; this only happens when the function is an attribute of the class.

Generator functions

A function or method which uses the yield statement (see section The yield statement) is called a generator function. Such a function, when called, always returns an iterator object which can be used to execute the body of the function: calling the iterator’s iterator.__next__() method will cause the function to execute until it provides a value using the yield statement. When the function executes a return statement or falls off the end, a StopIteration exception is raised and the iterator will have reached the end of the set of values to be returned.

Coroutine functions

A function or method which is defined using async def is called a coroutine function. Such a function, when called, returns a coroutine object. It may contain await expressions, as well as async with and async for statements. See also the Coroutine Objects section.

Asynchronous generator functions

A function or method which is defined using async def and which uses the yield statement is called a asynchronous generator function. Such a function, when called, returns an asynchronous iterator object which can be used in an async for statement to execute the body of the function.

Calling the asynchronous iterator’s aiterator.__anext__() method will return an awaitable which when awaited will execute until it provides a value using the yield expression. When the function executes an empty return statement or falls off the end, a StopAsyncIteration exception is raised and the asynchronous iterator will have reached the end of the set of values to be yielded.

Built-in functions

A built-in function object is a wrapper around a C function. Examples of built-in functions are len() and math.sin() (math is a standard built-in module). The number and type of the arguments are determined by the C function. Special read-only attributes: __doc__ is the function’s documentation string, or None if unavailable; __name__ is the function’s name; __self__ is set to None (but see the next item); __module__ is the name of the module the function was defined in or None if unavailable.

Built-in methods

This is really a different disguise of a built-in function, this time containing an object passed to the C function as an implicit extra argument. An example of a built-in method is alist.append(), assuming alist is a list object. In this case, the special read-only attribute __self__ is set to the object denoted by alist.

Classes

Classes are callable. These objects normally act as factories for new instances of themselves, but variations are possible for class types that override __new__(). The arguments of the call are passed to __new__() and, in the typical case, to __init__() to initialize the new instance.

Class Instances

Instances of arbitrary classes can be made callable by defining a __call__() method in their class.

Modules

Modules are a basic organizational unit of Python code, and are created by the import system as invoked either by the import statement, or by calling functions such as importlib.import_module() and built-in __import__(). A module object has a namespace implemented by a dictionary object (this is the dictionary referenced by the __globals__ attribute of functions defined in the module). Attribute references are translated to lookups in this dictionary, e.g., m.x is equivalent to m.__dict__["x"]. A module object does not contain the code object used to initialize the module (since it isn’t needed once the initialization is done).

Attribute assignment updates the module’s namespace dictionary, e.g., m.x = 1 is equivalent to m.__dict__["x"] = 1.

Predefined (writable) attributes: __name__ is the module’s name; __doc__ is the module’s documentation string, or None if unavailable; __annotations__ (optional) is a dictionary containing variable annotations collected during module body execution; __file__ is the pathname of the file from which the module was loaded, if it was loaded from a file. The __file__ attribute may be missing for certain types of modules, such as C modules that are statically linked into the interpreter; for extension modules loaded dynamically from a shared library, it is the pathname of the shared library file.

Special read-only attribute: __dict__ is the module’s namespace as a dictionary object.

CPython implementation detail: Because of the way CPython clears module dictionaries, the module dictionary will be cleared when the module falls out of scope even if the dictionary still has live references. To avoid this, copy the dictionary or keep the module around while using its dictionary directly.

Custom classes

Custom class types are typically created by class definitions (see section Definiciones de clase). A class has a namespace implemented by a dictionary object. Class attribute references are translated to lookups in this dictionary, e.g., C.x is translated to C.__dict__["x"] (although there are a number of hooks which allow for other means of locating attributes). When the attribute name is not found there, the attribute search continues in the base classes. This search of the base classes uses the C3 method resolution order which behaves correctly even in the presence of “diamond” inheritance structures where there are multiple inheritance paths leading back to a common ancestor. Additional details on the C3 MRO used by Python can be found in the documentation accompanying the 2.3 release at https://www.python.org/download/releases/2.3/mro/.

When a class attribute reference (for class C, say) would yield a class method object, it is transformed into an instance method object whose __self__ attribute is C. When it would yield a static method object, it is transformed into the object wrapped by the static method object. See section Implementing Descriptors for another way in which attributes retrieved from a class may differ from those actually contained in its __dict__.

Class attribute assignments update the class’s dictionary, never the dictionary of a base class.

A class object can be called (see above) to yield a class instance (see below).

Special attributes: __name__ is the class name; __module__ is the module name in which the class was defined; __dict__ is the dictionary containing the class’s namespace; __bases__ is a tuple containing the base classes, in the order of their occurrence in the base class list; __doc__ is the class’s documentation string, or None if undefined; __annotations__ (optional) is a dictionary containing variable annotations collected during class body execution.

Class instances

A class instance is created by calling a class object (see above). A class instance has a namespace implemented as a dictionary which is the first place in which attribute references are searched. When an attribute is not found there, and the instance’s class has an attribute by that name, the search continues with the class attributes. If a class attribute is found that is a user-defined function object, it is transformed into an instance method object whose __self__ attribute is the instance. Static method and class method objects are also transformed; see above under «Classes». See section Implementing Descriptors for another way in which attributes of a class retrieved via its instances may differ from the objects actually stored in the class’s __dict__. If no class attribute is found, and the object’s class has a __getattr__() method, that is called to satisfy the lookup.

Attribute assignments and deletions update the instance’s dictionary, never a class’s dictionary. If the class has a __setattr__() or __delattr__() method, this is called instead of updating the instance dictionary directly.

Class instances can pretend to be numbers, sequences, or mappings if they have methods with certain special names. See section Special method names.

Special attributes: __dict__ is the attribute dictionary; __class__ is the instance’s class.

I/O objects (also known as file objects)

A file object represents an open file. Various shortcuts are available to create file objects: the open() built-in function, and also os.popen(), os.fdopen(), and the makefile() method of socket objects (and perhaps by other functions or methods provided by extension modules).

The objects sys.stdin, sys.stdout and sys.stderr are initialized to file objects corresponding to the interpreter’s standard input, output and error streams; they are all open in text mode and therefore follow the interface defined by the io.TextIOBase abstract class.

Internal types

A few types used internally by the interpreter are exposed to the user. Their definitions may change with future versions of the interpreter, but they are mentioned here for completeness.

Code objects

Code objects represent byte-compiled executable Python code, or bytecode. The difference between a code object and a function object is that the function object contains an explicit reference to the function’s globals (the module in which it was defined), while a code object contains no context; also the default argument values are stored in the function object, not in the code object (because they represent values calculated at run-time). Unlike function objects, code objects are immutable and contain no references (directly or indirectly) to mutable objects.

Special read-only attributes: co_name gives the function name; co_argcount is the total number of positional arguments (including positional-only arguments and arguments with default values); co_posonlyargcount is the number of positional-only arguments (including arguments with default values); co_kwonlyargcount is the number of keyword-only arguments (including arguments with default values); co_nlocals is the number of local variables used by the function (including arguments); co_varnames is a tuple containing the names of the local variables (starting with the argument names); co_cellvars is a tuple containing the names of local variables that are referenced by nested functions; co_freevars is a tuple containing the names of free variables; co_code is a string representing the sequence of bytecode instructions; co_consts is a tuple containing the literals used by the bytecode; co_names is a tuple containing the names used by the bytecode; co_filename is the filename from which the code was compiled; co_firstlineno is the first line number of the function; co_lnotab is a string encoding the mapping from bytecode offsets to line numbers (for details see the source code of the interpreter); co_stacksize is the required stack size; co_flags is an integer encoding a number of flags for the interpreter.

The following flag bits are defined for co_flags: bit 0x04 is set if the function uses the *arguments syntax to accept an arbitrary number of positional arguments; bit 0x08 is set if the function uses the **keywords syntax to accept arbitrary keyword arguments; bit 0x20 is set if the function is a generator.

Future feature declarations (from __future__ import division) also use bits in co_flags to indicate whether a code object was compiled with a particular feature enabled: bit 0x2000 is set if the function was compiled with future division enabled; bits 0x10 and 0x1000 were used in earlier versions of Python.

Other bits in co_flags are reserved for internal use.

If a code object represents a function, the first item in co_consts is the documentation string of the function, or None if undefined.

Frame objects

Frame objects represent execution frames. They may occur in traceback objects (see below), and are also passed to registered trace functions.

Special read-only attributes: f_back is to the previous stack frame (towards the caller), or None if this is the bottom stack frame; f_code is the code object being executed in this frame; f_locals is the dictionary used to look up local variables; f_globals is used for global variables; f_builtins is used for built-in (intrinsic) names; f_lasti gives the precise instruction (this is an index into the bytecode string of the code object).

Accessing f_code raises an auditing event object.__getattr__ with arguments obj and "f_code".

Special writable attributes: f_trace, if not None, is a function called for various events during code execution (this is used by the debugger). Normally an event is triggered for each new source line - this can be disabled by setting f_trace_lines to False.

Implementations may allow per-opcode events to be requested by setting f_trace_opcodes to True. Note that this may lead to undefined interpreter behaviour if exceptions raised by the trace function escape to the function being traced.

f_lineno is the current line number of the frame — writing to this from within a trace function jumps to the given line (only for the bottom-most frame). A debugger can implement a Jump command (aka Set Next Statement) by writing to f_lineno.

Frame objects support one method:

frame.clear()

This method clears all references to local variables held by the frame. Also, if the frame belonged to a generator, the generator is finalized. This helps break reference cycles involving frame objects (for example when catching an exception and storing its traceback for later use).

RuntimeError is raised if the frame is currently executing.

Nuevo en la versión 3.4.

Traceback objects

Traceback objects represent a stack trace of an exception. A traceback object is implicitly created when an exception occurs, and may also be explicitly created by calling types.TracebackType.

For implicitly created tracebacks, when the search for an exception handler unwinds the execution stack, at each unwound level a traceback object is inserted in front of the current traceback. When an exception handler is entered, the stack trace is made available to the program. (See section La sentencia try.) It is accessible as the third item of the tuple returned by sys.exc_info(), and as the __traceback__ attribute of the caught exception.

When the program contains no suitable handler, the stack trace is written (nicely formatted) to the standard error stream; if the interpreter is interactive, it is also made available to the user as sys.last_traceback.

For explicitly created tracebacks, it is up to the creator of the traceback to determine how the tb_next attributes should be linked to form a full stack trace.

Special read-only attributes: tb_frame points to the execution frame of the current level; tb_lineno gives the line number where the exception occurred; tb_lasti indicates the precise instruction. The line number and last instruction in the traceback may differ from the line number of its frame object if the exception occurred in a try statement with no matching except clause or with a finally clause.

Accessing tb_frame raises an auditing event object.__getattr__ with arguments obj and "tb_frame".

Special writable attribute: tb_next is the next level in the stack trace (towards the frame where the exception occurred), or None if there is no next level.

Distinto en la versión 3.7: Traceback objects can now be explicitly instantiated from Python code, and the tb_next attribute of existing instances can be updated.

Slice objects

Slice objects are used to represent slices for __getitem__() methods. They are also created by the built-in slice() function.

Special read-only attributes: start is the lower bound; stop is the upper bound; step is the step value; each is None if omitted. These attributes can have any type.

Slice objects support one method:

slice.indices(self, length)

This method takes a single integer argument length and computes information about the slice that the slice object would describe if applied to a sequence of length items. It returns a tuple of three integers; respectively these are the start and stop indices and the step or stride length of the slice. Missing or out-of-bounds indices are handled in a manner consistent with regular slices.

Static method objects

Static method objects provide a way of defeating the transformation of function objects to method objects described above. A static method object is a wrapper around any other object, usually a user-defined method object. When a static method object is retrieved from a class or a class instance, the object actually returned is the wrapped object, which is not subject to any further transformation. Static method objects are not themselves callable, although the objects they wrap usually are. Static method objects are created by the built-in staticmethod() constructor.

Class method objects

A class method object, like a static method object, is a wrapper around another object that alters the way in which that object is retrieved from classes and class instances. The behaviour of class method objects upon such retrieval is described above, under «User-defined methods». Class method objects are created by the built-in classmethod() constructor.

3.3. Special method names

A class can implement certain operations that are invoked by special syntax (such as arithmetic operations or subscripting and slicing) by defining methods with special names. This is Python’s approach to operator overloading, allowing classes to define their own behavior with respect to language operators. For instance, if a class defines a method named __getitem__(), and x is an instance of this class, then x[i] is roughly equivalent to type(x).__getitem__(x, i). Except where mentioned, attempts to execute an operation raise an exception when no appropriate method is defined (typically AttributeError or TypeError).

Setting a special method to None indicates that the corresponding operation is not available. For example, if a class sets __iter__() to None, the class is not iterable, so calling iter() on its instances will raise a TypeError (without falling back to __getitem__()). 2

When implementing a class that emulates any built-in type, it is important that the emulation only be implemented to the degree that it makes sense for the object being modelled. For example, some sequences may work well with retrieval of individual elements, but extracting a slice may not make sense. (One example of this is the NodeList interface in the W3C’s Document Object Model.)

3.3.1. Basic customization

object.__new__(cls[, ...])

Called to create a new instance of class cls. __new__() is a static method (special-cased so you need not declare it as such) that takes the class of which an instance was requested as its first argument. The remaining arguments are those passed to the object constructor expression (the call to the class). The return value of __new__() should be the new object instance (usually an instance of cls).

Typical implementations create a new instance of the class by invoking the superclass’s __new__() method using super().__new__(cls[, ...]) with appropriate arguments and then modifying the newly-created instance as necessary before returning it.

If __new__() is invoked during object construction and it returns an instance of cls, then the new instance’s __init__() method will be invoked like __init__(self[, ...]), where self is the new instance and the remaining arguments are the same as were passed to the object constructor.

If __new__() does not return an instance of cls, then the new instance’s __init__() method will not be invoked.

__new__() is intended mainly to allow subclasses of immutable types (like int, str, or tuple) to customize instance creation. It is also commonly overridden in custom metaclasses in order to customize class creation.

object.__init__(self[, ...])

Called after the instance has been created (by __new__()), but before it is returned to the caller. The arguments are those passed to the class constructor expression. If a base class has an __init__() method, the derived class’s __init__() method, if any, must explicitly call it to ensure proper initialization of the base class part of the instance; for example: super().__init__([args...]).

Because __new__() and __init__() work together in constructing objects (__new__() to create it, and __init__() to customize it), no non-None value may be returned by __init__(); doing so will cause a TypeError to be raised at runtime.

object.__del__(self)

Called when the instance is about to be destroyed. This is also called a finalizer or (improperly) a destructor. If a base class has a __del__() method, the derived class’s __del__() method, if any, must explicitly call it to ensure proper deletion of the base class part of the instance.

It is possible (though not recommended!) for the __del__() method to postpone destruction of the instance by creating a new reference to it. This is called object resurrection. It is implementation-dependent whether __del__() is called a second time when a resurrected object is about to be destroyed; the current CPython implementation only calls it once.

It is not guaranteed that __del__() methods are called for objects that still exist when the interpreter exits.

Nota

del x doesn’t directly call x.__del__() — the former decrements the reference count for x by one, and the latter is only called when x’s reference count reaches zero.

CPython implementation detail: It is possible for a reference cycle to prevent the reference count of an object from going to zero. In this case, the cycle will be later detected and deleted by the cyclic garbage collector. A common cause of reference cycles is when an exception has been caught in a local variable. The frame’s locals then reference the exception, which references its own traceback, which references the locals of all frames caught in the traceback.

Ver también

Documentation for the gc module.

Advertencia

Due to the precarious circumstances under which __del__() methods are invoked, exceptions that occur during their execution are ignored, and a warning is printed to sys.stderr instead. In particular:

• __del__() can be invoked when arbitrary code is being executed, including from any arbitrary thread. If __del__() needs to take a lock or invoke any other blocking resource, it may deadlock as the resource may already be taken by the code that gets interrupted to execute __del__().

• __del__() can be executed during interpreter shutdown. As a consequence, the global variables it needs to access (including other modules) may already have been deleted or set to None. Python guarantees that globals whose name begins with a single underscore are deleted from their module before other globals are deleted; if no other references to such globals exist, this may help in assuring that imported modules are still available at the time when the __del__() method is called.

object.__repr__(self)

Called by the repr() built-in function to compute the «official» string representation of an object. If at all possible, this should look like a valid Python expression that could be used to recreate an object with the same value (given an appropriate environment). If this is not possible, a string of the form <...some useful description...> should be returned. The return value must be a string object. If a class defines __repr__() but not __str__(), then __repr__() is also used when an «informal» string representation of instances of that class is required.

This is typically used for debugging, so it is important that the representation is information-rich and unambiguous.

object.__str__(self)

Called by str(object) and the built-in functions format() and print() to compute the «informal» or nicely printable string representation of an object. The return value must be a string object.

This method differs from object.__repr__() in that there is no expectation that __str__() return a valid Python expression: a more convenient or concise representation can be used.

The default implementation defined by the built-in type object calls object.__repr__().

object.__bytes__(self)

Called by bytes to compute a byte-string representation of an object. This should return a bytes object.

object.__format__(self, format_spec)

Called by the format() built-in function, and by extension, evaluation of formatted string literals and the str.format() method, to produce a «formatted» string representation of an object. The format_spec argument is a string that contains a description of the formatting options desired. The interpretation of the format_spec argument is up to the type implementing __format__(), however most classes will either delegate formatting to one of the built-in types, or use a similar formatting option syntax.

See Especificación de formato Mini-Lenguaje for a description of the standard formatting syntax.

The return value must be a string object.

Distinto en la versión 3.4: The __format__ method of object itself raises a TypeError if passed any non-empty string.

Distinto en la versión 3.7: object.__format__(x, '') is now equivalent to str(x) rather than format(str(self), '').

object.__lt__(self, other)

object.__le__(self, other)

object.__eq__(self, other)

object.__ne__(self, other)

object.__gt__(self, other)

object.__ge__(self, other)

These are the so-called «rich comparison» methods. The correspondence between operator symbols and method names is as follows: x<y calls x.__lt__(y), x<=y calls x.__le__(y), x==y calls x.__eq__(y), x!=y calls x.__ne__(y), x>y calls x.__gt__(y), and x>=y calls x.__ge__(y).

A rich comparison method may return the singleton NotImplemented if it does not implement the operation for a given pair of arguments. By convention, False and True are returned for a successful comparison. However, these methods can return any value, so if the comparison operator is used in a Boolean context (e.g., in the condition of an if statement), Python will call bool() on the value to determine if the result is true or false.

By default, object implements __eq__() by using is, returning NotImplemented in the case of a false comparison: True if x is y else NotImplemented. For __ne__(), by default it delegates to __eq__() and inverts the result unless it is NotImplemented. There are no other implied relationships among the comparison operators or default implementations; for example, the truth of (x<y or x==y) does not imply x<=y. To automatically generate ordering operations from a single root operation, see functools.total_ordering().

See the paragraph on __hash__() for some important notes on creating hashable objects which support custom comparison operations and are usable as dictionary keys.

There are no swapped-argument versions of these methods (to be used when the left argument does not support the operation but the right argument does); rather, __lt__() and __gt__() are each other’s reflection, __le__() and __ge__() are each other’s reflection, and __eq__() and __ne__() are their own reflection. If the operands are of different types, and right operand’s type is a direct or indirect subclass of the left operand’s type, the reflected method of the right operand has priority, otherwise the left operand’s method has priority. Virtual subclassing is not considered.

object.__hash__(self)

Called by built-in function hash() and for operations on members of hashed collections including set, frozenset, and dict. __hash__() should return an integer. The only required property is that objects which compare equal have the same hash value; it is advised to mix together the hash values of the components of the object that also play a part in comparison of objects by packing them into a tuple and hashing the tuple. Example:

def __hash__(self):
    return hash((self.name, self.nick, self.color))

Nota

hash() truncates the value returned from an object’s custom __hash__() method to the size of a Py_ssize_t. This is typically 8 bytes on 64-bit builds and 4 bytes on 32-bit builds. If an object’s __hash__() must interoperate on builds of different bit sizes, be sure to check the width on all supported builds. An easy way to do this is with python -c "import sys; print(sys.hash_info.width)".

If a class does not define an __eq__() method it should not define a __hash__() operation either; if it defines __eq__() but not __hash__(), its instances will not be usable as items in hashable collections. If a class defines mutable objects and implements an __eq__() method, it should not implement __hash__(), since the implementation of hashable collections requires that a key’s hash value is immutable (if the object’s hash value changes, it will be in the wrong hash bucket).

User-defined classes have __eq__() and __hash__() methods by default; with them, all objects compare unequal (except with themselves) and x.__hash__() returns an appropriate value such that x == y implies both that x is y and hash(x) == hash(y).

A class that overrides __eq__() and does not define __hash__() will have its __hash__() implicitly set to None. When the __hash__() method of a class is None, instances of the class will raise an appropriate TypeError when a program attempts to retrieve their hash value, and will also be correctly identified as unhashable when checking isinstance(obj, collections.abc.Hashable).

If a class that overrides __eq__() needs to retain the implementation of __hash__() from a parent class, the interpreter must be told this explicitly by setting __hash__ = <ParentClass>.__hash__.

If a class that does not override __eq__() wishes to suppress hash support, it should include __hash__ = None in the class definition. A class which defines its own __hash__() that explicitly raises a TypeError would be incorrectly identified as hashable by an isinstance(obj, collections.abc.Hashable) call.

Nota

By default, the __hash__() values of str and bytes objects are «salted» with an unpredictable random value. Although they remain constant within an individual Python process, they are not predictable between repeated invocations of Python.

This is intended to provide protection against a denial-of-service caused by carefully-chosen inputs that exploit the worst case performance of a dict insertion, O(n^2) complexity. See http://www.ocert.org/advisories/ocert-2011-003.html for details.

Changing hash values affects the iteration order of sets. Python has never made guarantees about this ordering (and it typically varies between 32-bit and 64-bit builds).

See also PYTHONHASHSEED.

Distinto en la versión 3.3: Hash randomization is enabled by default.

object.__bool__(self)

Called to implement truth value testing and the built-in operation bool(); should return False or True. When this method is not defined, __len__() is called, if it is defined, and the object is considered true if its result is nonzero. If a class defines neither __len__() nor __bool__(), all its instances are considered true.

3.3.2. Customizing attribute access

The following methods can be defined to customize the meaning of attribute access (use of, assignment to, or deletion of x.name) for class instances.

object.__getattr__(self, name)

Called when the default attribute access fails with an AttributeError (either __getattribute__() raises an AttributeError because name is not an instance attribute or an attribute in the class tree for self; or __get__() of a name property raises AttributeError). This method should either return the (computed) attribute value or raise an AttributeError exception.

Note that if the attribute is found through the normal mechanism, __getattr__() is not called. (This is an intentional asymmetry between __getattr__() and __setattr__().) This is done both for efficiency reasons and because otherwise __getattr__() would have no way to access other attributes of the instance. Note that at least for instance variables, you can fake total control by not inserting any values in the instance attribute dictionary (but instead inserting them in another object). See the __getattribute__() method below for a way to actually get total control over attribute access.

object.__getattribute__(self, name)

Called unconditionally to implement attribute accesses for instances of the class. If the class also defines __getattr__(), the latter will not be called unless __getattribute__() either calls it explicitly or raises an AttributeError. This method should return the (computed) attribute value or raise an AttributeError exception. In order to avoid infinite recursion in this method, its implementation should always call the base class method with the same name to access any attributes it needs, for example, object.__getattribute__(self, name).

Nota

This method may still be bypassed when looking up special methods as the result of implicit invocation via language syntax or built-in functions. See Special method lookup.

For certain sensitive attribute accesses, raises an auditing event object.__getattr__ with arguments obj and name.

object.__setattr__(self, name, value)

Called when an attribute assignment is attempted. This is called instead of the normal mechanism (i.e. store the value in the instance dictionary). name is the attribute name, value is the value to be assigned to it.

If __setattr__() wants to assign to an instance attribute, it should call the base class method with the same name, for example, object.__setattr__(self, name, value).

For certain sensitive attribute assignments, raises an auditing event object.__setattr__ with arguments obj, name, value.

object.__delattr__(self, name)

Like __setattr__() but for attribute deletion instead of assignment. This should only be implemented if del obj.name is meaningful for the object.

For certain sensitive attribute deletions, raises an auditing event object.__delattr__ with arguments obj and name.

object.__dir__(self)

Called when dir() is called on the object. A sequence must be returned. dir() converts the returned sequence to a list and sorts it.

3.3.2.1. Customizing module attribute access

Special names __getattr__ and __dir__ can be also used to customize access to module attributes. The __getattr__ function at the module level should accept one argument which is the name of an attribute and return the computed value or raise an AttributeError. If an attribute is not found on a module object through the normal lookup, i.e. object.__getattribute__(), then __getattr__ is searched in the module __dict__ before raising an AttributeError. If found, it is called with the attribute name and the result is returned.

The __dir__ function should accept no arguments, and return a sequence of strings that represents the names accessible on module. If present, this function overrides the standard dir() search on a module.

For a more fine grained customization of the module behavior (setting attributes, properties, etc.), one can set the __class__ attribute of a module object to a subclass of types.ModuleType. For example:

import sys
from types import ModuleType

class VerboseModule(ModuleType):
    def __repr__(self):
        return f'Verbose {self.__name__}'

    def __setattr__(self, attr, value):
        print(f'Setting {attr}...')
        super().__setattr__(attr, value)

sys.modules[__name__].__class__ = VerboseModule

Nota

Defining module __getattr__ and setting module __class__ only affect lookups made using the attribute access syntax – directly accessing the module globals (whether by code within the module, or via a reference to the module’s globals dictionary) is unaffected.

Distinto en la versión 3.5: __class__ module attribute is now writable.

Nuevo en la versión 3.7: __getattr__ and __dir__ module attributes.

Ver también

PEP 562 - Module __getattr__ and __dir__

Describes the __getattr__ and __dir__ functions on modules.

3.3.2.2. Implementing Descriptors

The following methods only apply when an instance of the class containing the method (a so-called descriptor class) appears in an owner class (the descriptor must be in either the owner’s class dictionary or in the class dictionary for one of its parents). In the examples below, «the attribute» refers to the attribute whose name is the key of the property in the owner class” __dict__.

object.__get__(self, instance, owner=None)

Called to get the attribute of the owner class (class attribute access) or of an instance of that class (instance attribute access). The optional owner argument is the owner class, while instance is the instance that the attribute was accessed through, or None when the attribute is accessed through the owner.

This method should return the computed attribute value or raise an AttributeError exception.

PEP 252 specifies that __get__() is callable with one or two arguments. Python’s own built-in descriptors support this specification; however, it is likely that some third-party tools have descriptors that require both arguments. Python’s own __getattribute__() implementation always passes in both arguments whether they are required or not.

object.__set__(self, instance, value)

Called to set the attribute on an instance instance of the owner class to a new value, value.

Note, adding __set__() or __delete__() changes the kind of descriptor to a «data descriptor». See Invoking Descriptors for more details.

object.__delete__(self, instance)

Called to delete the attribute on an instance instance of the owner class.

object.__set_name__(self, owner, name)

Called at the time the owning class owner is created. The descriptor has been assigned to name.

Nota

__set_name__() is only called implicitly as part of the type constructor, so it will need to be called explicitly with the appropriate parameters when a descriptor is added to a class after initial creation:

class A:
   pass
descr = custom_descriptor()
A.attr = descr
descr.__set_name__(A, 'attr')

See Creating the class object for more details.

Nuevo en la versión 3.6.

The attribute __objclass__ is interpreted by the inspect module as specifying the class where this object was defined (setting this appropriately can assist in runtime introspection of dynamic class attributes). For callables, it may indicate that an instance of the given type (or a subclass) is expected or required as the first positional argument (for example, CPython sets this attribute for unbound methods that are implemented in C).

3.3.2.3. Invoking Descriptors

In general, a descriptor is an object attribute with «binding behavior», one whose attribute access has been overridden by methods in the descriptor protocol: __get__(), __set__(), and __delete__(). If any of those methods are defined for an object, it is said to be a descriptor.

The default behavior for attribute access is to get, set, or delete the attribute from an object’s dictionary. For instance, a.x has a lookup chain starting with a.__dict__['x'], then type(a).__dict__['x'], and continuing through the base classes of type(a) excluding metaclasses.

However, if the looked-up value is an object defining one of the descriptor methods, then Python may override the default behavior and invoke the descriptor method instead. Where this occurs in the precedence chain depends on which descriptor methods were defined and how they were called.

The starting point for descriptor invocation is a binding, a.x. How the arguments are assembled depends on a:

Direct Call

The simplest and least common call is when user code directly invokes a descriptor method: x.__get__(a).

Instance Binding

If binding to an object instance, a.x is transformed into the call: type(a).__dict__['x'].__get__(a, type(a)).

Class Binding

If binding to a class, A.x is transformed into the call: A.__dict__['x'].__get__(None, A).

Super Binding

If a is an instance of super, then the binding super(B, obj).m() searches obj.__class__.__mro__ for the base class A immediately preceding B and then invokes the descriptor with the call: A.__dict__['m'].__get__(obj, obj.__class__).

For instance bindings, the precedence of descriptor invocation depends on which descriptor methods are defined. A descriptor can define any combination of __get__(), __set__() and __delete__(). If it does not define __get__(), then accessing the attribute will return the descriptor object itself unless there is a value in the object’s instance dictionary. If the descriptor defines __set__() and/or __delete__(), it is a data descriptor; if it defines neither, it is a non-data descriptor. Normally, data descriptors define both __get__() and __set__(), while non-data descriptors have just the __get__() method. Data descriptors with __set__() and __get__() defined always override a redefinition in an instance dictionary. In contrast, non-data descriptors can be overridden by instances.

Python methods (including staticmethod() and classmethod()) are implemented as non-data descriptors. Accordingly, instances can redefine and override methods. This allows individual instances to acquire behaviors that differ from other instances of the same class.

The property() function is implemented as a data descriptor. Accordingly, instances cannot override the behavior of a property.

3.3.2.4. __slots__

__slots__ allow us to explicitly declare data members (like properties) and deny the creation of __dict__ and __weakref__ (unless explicitly declared in __slots__ or available in a parent.)

The space saved over using __dict__ can be significant. Attribute lookup speed can be significantly improved as well.

object.__slots__

This class variable can be assigned a string, iterable, or sequence of strings with variable names used by instances. __slots__ reserves space for the declared variables and prevents the automatic creation of __dict__ and __weakref__ for each instance.

3.3.2.4.1. Notes on using __slots__

• When inheriting from a class without __slots__, the __dict__ and __weakref__ attribute of the instances will always be accessible.

• Without a __dict__ variable, instances cannot be assigned new variables not listed in the __slots__ definition. Attempts to assign to an unlisted variable name raises AttributeError. If dynamic assignment of new variables is desired, then add '__dict__' to the sequence of strings in the __slots__ declaration.

• Without a __weakref__ variable for each instance, classes defining __slots__ do not support weak references to its instances. If weak reference support is needed, then add '__weakref__' to the sequence of strings in the __slots__ declaration.

• __slots__ are implemented at the class level by creating descriptors (Implementing Descriptors) for each variable name. As a result, class attributes cannot be used to set default values for instance variables defined by __slots__; otherwise, the class attribute would overwrite the descriptor assignment.

• The action of a __slots__ declaration is not limited to the class where it is defined. __slots__ declared in parents are available in child classes. However, child subclasses will get a __dict__ and __weakref__ unless they also define __slots__ (which should only contain names of any additional slots).

• If a class defines a slot also defined in a base class, the instance variable defined by the base class slot is inaccessible (except by retrieving its descriptor directly from the base class). This renders the meaning of the program undefined. In the future, a check may be added to prevent this.

• Nonempty __slots__ does not work for classes derived from «variable-length» built-in types such as int, bytes and tuple.

• Any non-string iterable may be assigned to __slots__. Mappings may also be used; however, in the future, special meaning may be assigned to the values corresponding to each key.

• __class__ assignment works only if both classes have the same __slots__.

• Multiple inheritance with multiple slotted parent classes can be used, but only one parent is allowed to have attributes created by slots (the other bases must have empty slot layouts) - violations raise TypeError.

• If an iterator is used for __slots__ then a descriptor is created for each of the iterator’s values. However, the __slots__ attribute will be an empty iterator.

3.3.3. Customizing class creation

Whenever a class inherits from another class, __init_subclass__ is called on that class. This way, it is possible to write classes which change the behavior of subclasses. This is closely related to class decorators, but where class decorators only affect the specific class they’re applied to, __init_subclass__ solely applies to future subclasses of the class defining the method.

classmethod object.__init_subclass__(cls)

This method is called whenever the containing class is subclassed. cls is then the new subclass. If defined as a normal instance method, this method is implicitly converted to a class method.

Keyword arguments which are given to a new class are passed to the parent’s class __init_subclass__. For compatibility with other classes using __init_subclass__, one should take out the needed keyword arguments and pass the others over to the base class, as in:

class Philosopher:
    def __init_subclass__(cls, /, default_name, **kwargs):
        super().__init_subclass__(**kwargs)
        cls.default_name = default_name

class AustralianPhilosopher(Philosopher, default_name="Bruce"):
    pass

The default implementation object.__init_subclass__ does nothing, but raises an error if it is called with any arguments.

Nota

The metaclass hint metaclass is consumed by the rest of the type machinery, and is never passed to __init_subclass__ implementations. The actual metaclass (rather than the explicit hint) can be accessed as type(cls).

Nuevo en la versión 3.6.

3.3.3.1. Metaclasses

By default, classes are constructed using type(). The class body is executed in a new namespace and the class name is bound locally to the result of type(name, bases, namespace).

The class creation process can be customized by passing the metaclass keyword argument in the class definition line, or by inheriting from an existing class that included such an argument. In the following example, both MyClass and MySubclass are instances of Meta:

class Meta(type):
    pass

class MyClass(metaclass=Meta):
    pass

class MySubclass(MyClass):
    pass

Any other keyword arguments that are specified in the class definition are passed through to all metaclass operations described below.

When a class definition is executed, the following steps occur:

• MRO entries are resolved;

• the appropriate metaclass is determined;

• the class namespace is prepared;

• the class body is executed;

• the class object is created.

3.3.3.2. Resolving MRO entries

If a base that appears in class definition is not an instance of type, then an __mro_entries__ method is searched on it. If found, it is called with the original bases tuple. This method must return a tuple of classes that will be used instead of this base. The tuple may be empty, in such case the original base is ignored.

Ver también

PEP 560 - Core support for typing module and generic types

3.3.3.3. Determining the appropriate metaclass

The appropriate metaclass for a class definition is determined as follows:

• if no bases and no explicit metaclass are given, then type() is used;

• if an explicit metaclass is given and it is not an instance of type(), then it is used directly as the metaclass;

• if an instance of type() is given as the explicit metaclass, or bases are defined, then the most derived metaclass is used.

The most derived metaclass is selected from the explicitly specified metaclass (if any) and the metaclasses (i.e. type(cls)) of all specified base classes. The most derived metaclass is one which is a subtype of all of these candidate metaclasses. If none of the candidate metaclasses meets that criterion, then the class definition will fail with TypeError.

3.3.3.4. Preparing the class namespace

Once the appropriate metaclass has been identified, then the class namespace is prepared. If the metaclass has a __prepare__ attribute, it is called as namespace = metaclass.__prepare__(name, bases, **kwds) (where the additional keyword arguments, if any, come from the class definition). The __prepare__ method should be implemented as a classmethod(). The namespace returned by __prepare__ is passed in to __new__, but when the final class object is created the namespace is copied into a new dict.

If the metaclass has no __prepare__ attribute, then the class namespace is initialised as an empty ordered mapping.

Ver también

PEP 3115 - Metaclasses in Python 3000

Introduced the __prepare__ namespace hook

3.3.3.5. Executing the class body

The class body is executed (approximately) as exec(body, globals(), namespace). The key difference from a normal call to exec() is that lexical scoping allows the class body (including any methods) to reference names from the current and outer scopes when the class definition occurs inside a function.

However, even when the class definition occurs inside the function, methods defined inside the class still cannot see names defined at the class scope. Class variables must be accessed through the first parameter of instance or class methods, or through the implicit lexically scoped __class__ reference described in the next section.

3.3.3.6. Creating the class object

Once the class namespace has been populated by executing the class body, the class object is created by calling metaclass(name, bases, namespace, **kwds) (the additional keywords passed here are the same as those passed to __prepare__).

This class object is the one that will be referenced by the zero-argument form of super(). __class__ is an implicit closure reference created by the compiler if any methods in a class body refer to either __class__ or super. This allows the zero argument form of super() to correctly identify the class being defined based on lexical scoping, while the class or instance that was used to make the current call is identified based on the first argument passed to the method.

CPython implementation detail: In CPython 3.6 and later, the __class__ cell is passed to the metaclass as a __classcell__ entry in the class namespace. If present, this must be propagated up to the type.__new__ call in order for the class to be initialised correctly. Failing to do so will result in a RuntimeError in Python 3.8.

When using the default metaclass type, or any metaclass that ultimately calls type.__new__, the following additional customisation steps are invoked after creating the class object:

• first, type.__new__ collects all of the descriptors in the class namespace that define a __set_name__() method;

• second, all of these __set_name__ methods are called with the class being defined and the assigned name of that particular descriptor;

• finally, the __init_subclass__() hook is called on the immediate parent of the new class in its method resolution order.

After the class object is created, it is passed to the class decorators included in the class definition (if any) and the resulting object is bound in the local namespace as the defined class.

When a new class is created by type.__new__, the object provided as the namespace parameter is copied to a new ordered mapping and the original object is discarded. The new copy is wrapped in a read-only proxy, which becomes the __dict__ attribute of the class object.

Ver también

PEP 3135 - New super

Describes the implicit __class__ closure reference

3.3.3.7. Uses for metaclasses

The potential uses for metaclasses are boundless. Some ideas that have been explored include enum, logging, interface checking, automatic delegation, automatic property creation, proxies, frameworks, and automatic resource locking/synchronization.

3.3.4. Customizing instance and subclass checks

The following methods are used to override the default behavior of the isinstance() and issubclass() built-in functions.

In particular, the metaclass abc.ABCMeta implements these methods in order to allow the addition of Abstract Base Classes (ABCs) as «virtual base classes» to any class or type (including built-in types), including other ABCs.

class.__instancecheck__(self, instance)

Return true if instance should be considered a (direct or indirect) instance of class. If defined, called to implement isinstance(instance, class).

class.__subclasscheck__(self, subclass)

Return true if subclass should be considered a (direct or indirect) subclass of class. If defined, called to implement issubclass(subclass, class).

Note that these methods are looked up on the type (metaclass) of a class. They cannot be defined as class methods in the actual class. This is consistent with the lookup of special methods that are called on instances, only in this case the instance is itself a class.

Ver también

PEP 3119 - Introducing Abstract Base Classes

Includes the specification for customizing isinstance() and issubclass() behavior through __instancecheck__() and __subclasscheck__(), with motivation for this functionality in the context of adding Abstract Base Classes (see the abc module) to the language.

3.3.5. Emulating generic types

One can implement the generic class syntax as specified by PEP 484 (for example List[int]) by defining a special method:

classmethod object.__class_getitem__(cls, key)

Return an object representing the specialization of a generic class by type arguments found in key.

This method is looked up on the class object itself, and when defined in the class body, this method is implicitly a class method. Note, this mechanism is primarily reserved for use with static type hints, other usage is discouraged.

Ver también

PEP 560 - Core support for typing module and generic types

3.3.6. Emulating callable objects

object.__call__(self[, args...])

Called when the instance is «called» as a function; if this method is defined, x(arg1, arg2, ...) roughly translates to type(x).__call__(x, arg1, ...).

3.3.7. Emulating container types

The following methods can be defined to implement container objects. Containers usually are sequences (such as lists or tuples) or mappings (like dictionaries), but can represent other containers as well. The first set of methods is used either to emulate a sequence or to emulate a mapping; the difference is that for a sequence, the allowable keys should be the integers k for which 0 <= k < N where N is the length of the sequence, or slice objects, which define a range of items. It is also recommended that mappings provide the methods keys(), values(), items(), get(), clear(), setdefault(), pop(), popitem(), copy(), and update() behaving similar to those for Python’s standard dictionary objects. The collections.abc module provides a MutableMapping abstract base class to help create those methods from a base set of __getitem__(), __setitem__(), __delitem__(), and keys(). Mutable sequences should provide methods append(), count(), index(), extend(), insert(), pop(), remove(), reverse() and sort(), like Python standard list objects. Finally, sequence types should implement addition (meaning concatenation) and multiplication (meaning repetition) by defining the methods __add__(), __radd__(), __iadd__(), __mul__(), __rmul__() and __imul__() described below; they should not define other numerical operators. It is recommended that both mappings and sequences implement the __contains__() method to allow efficient use of the in operator; for mappings, in should search the mapping’s keys; for sequences, it should search through the values. It is further recommended that both mappings and sequences implement the __iter__() method to allow efficient iteration through the container; for mappings, __iter__() should iterate through the object’s keys; for sequences, it should iterate through the values.

object.__len__(self)

Called to implement the built-in function len(). Should return the length of the object, an integer >= 0. Also, an object that doesn’t define a __bool__() method and whose __len__() method returns zero is considered to be false in a Boolean context.

CPython implementation detail: In CPython, the length is required to be at most sys.maxsize. If the length is larger than sys.maxsize some features (such as len()) may raise OverflowError. To prevent raising OverflowError by truth value testing, an object must define a __bool__() method.

object.__length_hint__(self)

Called to implement operator.length_hint(). Should return an estimated length for the object (which may be greater or less than the actual length). The length must be an integer >= 0. The return value may also be NotImplemented, which is treated the same as if the __length_hint__ method didn’t exist at all. This method is purely an optimization and is never required for correctness.

Nuevo en la versión 3.4.

Nota

Slicing is done exclusively with the following three methods. A call like

a[1:2] = b

is translated to

a[slice(1, 2, None)] = b

and so forth. Missing slice items are always filled in with None.

object.__getitem__(self, key)

Called to implement evaluation of self[key]. For sequence types, the accepted keys should be integers and slice objects. Note that the special interpretation of negative indexes (if the class wishes to emulate a sequence type) is up to the __getitem__() method. If key is of an inappropriate type, TypeError may be raised; if of a value outside the set of indexes for the sequence (after any special interpretation of negative values), IndexError should be raised. For mapping types, if key is missing (not in the container), KeyError should be raised.

Nota

for loops expect that an IndexError will be raised for illegal indexes to allow proper detection of the end of the sequence.

object.__setitem__(self, key, value)

Called to implement assignment to self[key]. Same note as for __getitem__(). This should only be implemented for mappings if the objects support changes to the values for keys, or if new keys can be added, or for sequences if elements can be replaced. The same exceptions should be raised for improper key values as for the __getitem__() method.

object.__delitem__(self, key)

Called to implement deletion of self[key]. Same note as for __getitem__(). This should only be implemented for mappings if the objects support removal of keys, or for sequences if elements can be removed from the sequence. The same exceptions should be raised for improper key values as for the __getitem__() method.

object.__missing__(self, key)

Called by dict.__getitem__() to implement self[key] for dict subclasses when key is not in the dictionary.

object.__iter__(self)

This method is called when an iterator is required for a container. This method should return a new iterator object that can iterate over all the objects in the container. For mappings, it should iterate over the keys of the container.

Iterator objects also need to implement this method; they are required to return themselves. For more information on iterator objects, see Tipos de iteradores.

object.__reversed__(self)

Called (if present) by the reversed() built-in to implement reverse iteration. It should return a new iterator object that iterates over all the objects in the container in reverse order.

If the __reversed__() method is not provided, the reversed() built-in will fall back to using the sequence protocol (__len__() and __getitem__()). Objects that support the sequence protocol should only provide __reversed__() if they can provide an implementation that is more efficient than the one provided by reversed().

The membership test operators (in and not in) are normally implemented as an iteration through a container. However, container objects can supply the following special method with a more efficient implementation, which also does not require the object be iterable.

object.__contains__(self, item)

Called to implement membership test operators. Should return true if item is in self, false otherwise. For mapping objects, this should consider the keys of the mapping rather than the values or the key-item pairs.

For objects that don’t define __contains__(), the membership test first tries iteration via __iter__(), then the old sequence iteration protocol via __getitem__(), see this section in the language reference.

3.3.8. Emulating numeric types

The following methods can be defined to emulate numeric objects. Methods corresponding to operations that are not supported by the particular kind of number implemented (e.g., bitwise operations for non-integral numbers) should be left undefined.

object.__add__(self, other)

object.__sub__(self, other)

object.__mul__(self, other)

object.__matmul__(self, other)

object.__truediv__(self, other)

object.__floordiv__(self, other)

object.__mod__(self, other)

object.__divmod__(self, other)

object.__pow__(self, other[, modulo])

object.__lshift__(self, other)

object.__rshift__(self, other)

object.__and__(self, other)

object.__xor__(self, other)

object.__or__(self, other)

These methods are called to implement the binary arithmetic operations (+, -, *, @, /, //, %, divmod(), pow(), **, <<, >>, &, ^, |). For instance, to evaluate the expression x + y, where x is an instance of a class that has an __add__() method, x.__add__(y) is called. The __divmod__() method should be the equivalent to using __floordiv__() and __mod__(); it should not be related to __truediv__(). Note that __pow__() should be defined to accept an optional third argument if the ternary version of the built-in pow() function is to be supported.

If one of those methods does not support the operation with the supplied arguments, it should return NotImplemented.

object.__radd__(self, other)

object.__rsub__(self, other)

object.__rmul__(self, other)

object.__rmatmul__(self, other)

object.__rtruediv__(self, other)

object.__rfloordiv__(self, other)

object.__rmod__(self, other)

object.__rdivmod__(self, other)

object.__rpow__(self, other[, modulo])

object.__rlshift__(self, other)

object.__rrshift__(self, other)

object.__rand__(self, other)

object.__rxor__(self, other)

object.__ror__(self, other)

These methods are called to implement the binary arithmetic operations (+, -, *, @, /, //, %, divmod(), pow(), **, <<, >>, &, ^, |) with reflected (swapped) operands. These functions are only called if the left operand does not support the corresponding operation 3 and the operands are of different types. 4 For instance, to evaluate the expression x - y, where y is an instance of a class that has an __rsub__() method, y.__rsub__(x) is called if x.__sub__(y) returns NotImplemented.

Note that ternary pow() will not try calling __rpow__() (the coercion rules would become too complicated).

Nota

If the right operand’s type is a subclass of the left operand’s type and that subclass provides a different implementation of the reflected method for the operation, this method will be called before the left operand’s non-reflected method. This behavior allows subclasses to override their ancestors” operations.

object.__iadd__(self, other)

object.__isub__(self, other)

object.__imul__(self, other)

object.__imatmul__(self, other)

object.__itruediv__(self, other)

object.__ifloordiv__(self, other)

object.__imod__(self, other)

object.__ipow__(self, other[, modulo])

object.__ilshift__(self, other)

object.__irshift__(self, other)

object.__iand__(self, other)

object.__ixor__(self, other)

object.__ior__(self, other)

These methods are called to implement the augmented arithmetic assignments (+=, -=, *=, @=, /=, //=, %=, **=, <<=, >>=, &=, ^=, |=). These methods should attempt to do the operation in-place (modifying self) and return the result (which could be, but does not have to be, self). If a specific method is not defined, the augmented assignment falls back to the normal methods. For instance, if x is an instance of a class with an __iadd__() method, x += y is equivalent to x = x.__iadd__(y) . Otherwise, x.__add__(y) and y.__radd__(x) are considered, as with the evaluation of x + y. In certain situations, augmented assignment can result in unexpected errors (see ¿Por qué hacer lo siguiente, a_tuple[i] += ['item'], lanza una excepción cuando la suma funciona?), but this behavior is in fact part of the data model.

Nota

Due to a bug in the dispatching mechanism for **=, a class that defines __ipow__() but returns NotImplemented would fail to fall back to x.__pow__(y) and y.__rpow__(x). This bug is fixed in Python 3.10.

object.__neg__(self)

object.__pos__(self)

object.__abs__(self)

object.__invert__(self)

Called to implement the unary arithmetic operations (-, +, abs() and ~).

object.__complex__(self)

object.__int__(self)

object.__float__(self)

Called to implement the built-in functions complex(), int() and float(). Should return a value of the appropriate type.

object.__index__(self)

Called to implement operator.index(), and whenever Python needs to losslessly convert the numeric object to an integer object (such as in slicing, or in the built-in bin(), hex() and oct() functions). Presence of this method indicates that the numeric object is an integer type. Must return an integer.

If __int__(), __float__() and __complex__() are not defined then corresponding built-in functions int(), float() and complex() fall back to __index__().

object.__round__(self[, ndigits])

object.__trunc__(self)

object.__floor__(self)

object.__ceil__(self)

Called to implement the built-in function round() and math functions trunc(), floor() and ceil(). Unless ndigits is passed to __round__() all these methods should return the value of the object truncated to an Integral (typically an int).

The built-in function int() falls back to __trunc__() if neither __int__() nor __index__() is defined.

3.3.9. With Statement Context Managers

A context manager is an object that defines the runtime context to be established when executing a with statement. The context manager handles the entry into, and the exit from, the desired runtime context for the execution of the block of code. Context managers are normally invoked using the with statement (described in section La sentencia with), but can also be used by directly invoking their methods.

Typical uses of context managers include saving and restoring various kinds of global state, locking and unlocking resources, closing opened files, etc.

For more information on context managers, see Tipos Gestores de Contexto.

object.__enter__(self)

Enter the runtime context related to this object. The with statement will bind this method’s return value to the target(s) specified in the as clause of the statement, if any.

object.__exit__(self, exc_type, exc_value, traceback)

Exit the runtime context related to this object. The parameters describe the exception that caused the context to be exited. If the context was exited without an exception, all three arguments will be None.

If an exception is supplied, and the method wishes to suppress the exception (i.e., prevent it from being propagated), it should return a true value. Otherwise, the exception will be processed normally upon exit from this method.

Note that __exit__() methods should not reraise the passed-in exception; this is the caller’s responsibility.

Ver también

PEP 343 - The «with» statement

The specification, background, and examples for the Python with statement.

3.3.10. Special method lookup

For custom classes, implicit invocations of special methods are only guaranteed to work correctly if defined on an object’s type, not in the object’s instance dictionary. That behaviour is the reason why the following code raises an exception:

>>> class C:
...     pass
...
>>> c = C()
>>> c.__len__ = lambda: 5
>>> len(c)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: object of type 'C' has no len()

The rationale behind this behaviour lies with a number of special methods such as __hash__() and __repr__() that are implemented by all objects, including type objects. If the implicit lookup of these methods used the conventional lookup process, they would fail when invoked on the type object itself:

>>> 1 .__hash__() == hash(1)
True
>>> int.__hash__() == hash(int)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: descriptor '__hash__' of 'int' object needs an argument

Incorrectly attempting to invoke an unbound method of a class in this way is sometimes referred to as “metaclass confusion”, and is avoided by bypassing the instance when looking up special methods:

>>> type(1).__hash__(1) == hash(1)
True
>>> type(int).__hash__(int) == hash(int)
True

In addition to bypassing any instance attributes in the interest of correctness, implicit special method lookup generally also bypasses the __getattribute__() method even of the object’s metaclass:

>>> class Meta(type):
...     def __getattribute__(*args):
...         print("Metaclass getattribute invoked")
...         return type.__getattribute__(*args)
...
>>> class C(object, metaclass=Meta):
...     def __len__(self):
...         return 10
...     def __getattribute__(*args):
...         print("Class getattribute invoked")
...         return object.__getattribute__(*args)
...
>>> c = C()
>>> c.__len__()                 # Explicit lookup via instance
Class getattribute invoked
10
>>> type(c).__len__(c)          # Explicit lookup via type
Metaclass getattribute invoked
10
>>> len(c)                      # Implicit lookup
10

Bypassing the __getattribute__() machinery in this fashion provides significant scope for speed optimisations within the interpreter, at the cost of some flexibility in the handling of special methods (the special method must be set on the class object itself in order to be consistently invoked by the interpreter).

3.4. Coroutines

3.4.1. Awaitable Objects

An awaitable object generally implements an __await__() method. Coroutine objects returned from async def functions are awaitable.

Nota

The generator iterator objects returned from generators decorated with types.coroutine() or asyncio.coroutine() are also awaitable, but they do not implement __await__().

object.__await__(self)

Must return an iterator. Should be used to implement awaitable objects. For instance, asyncio.Future implements this method to be compatible with the await expression.

Nuevo en la versión 3.5.

Ver también

PEP 492 for additional information about awaitable objects.

3.4.2. Coroutine Objects

Coroutine objects are awaitable objects. A coroutine’s execution can be controlled by calling __await__() and iterating over the result. When the coroutine has finished executing and returns, the iterator raises StopIteration, and the exception’s value attribute holds the return value. If the coroutine raises an exception, it is propagated by the iterator. Coroutines should not directly raise unhandled StopIteration exceptions.

Coroutines also have the methods listed below, which are analogous to those of generators (see Métodos generador-iterador). However, unlike generators, coroutines do not directly support iteration.

Distinto en la versión 3.5.2: It is a RuntimeError to await on a coroutine more than once.

coroutine.send(value)

Starts or resumes execution of the coroutine. If value is None, this is equivalent to advancing the iterator returned by __await__(). If value is not None, this method delegates to the send() method of the iterator that caused the coroutine to suspend. The result (return value, StopIteration, or other exception) is the same as when iterating over the __await__() return value, described above.

coroutine.throw(type[, value[, traceback]])

Raises the specified exception in the coroutine. This method delegates to the throw() method of the iterator that caused the coroutine to suspend, if it has such a method. Otherwise, the exception is raised at the suspension point. The result (return value, StopIteration, or other exception) is the same as when iterating over the __await__() return value, described above. If the exception is not caught in the coroutine, it propagates back to the caller.

coroutine.close()

Causes the coroutine to clean itself up and exit. If the coroutine is suspended, this method first delegates to the close() method of the iterator that caused the coroutine to suspend, if it has such a method. Then it raises GeneratorExit at the suspension point, causing the coroutine to immediately clean itself up. Finally, the coroutine is marked as having finished executing, even if it was never started.

Coroutine objects are automatically closed using the above process when they are about to be destroyed.

3.4.3. Asynchronous Iterators

An asynchronous iterator can call asynchronous code in its __anext__ method.

Asynchronous iterators can be used in an async for statement.

object.__aiter__(self)

Must return an asynchronous iterator object.

object.__anext__(self)

Must return an awaitable resulting in a next value of the iterator. Should raise a StopAsyncIteration error when the iteration is over.

An example of an asynchronous iterable object:

class Reader:
    async def readline(self):
        ...

    def __aiter__(self):
        return self

    async def __anext__(self):
        val = await self.readline()
        if val == b'':
            raise StopAsyncIteration
        return val

Nuevo en la versión 3.5.

Distinto en la versión 3.7: Prior to Python 3.7, __aiter__ could return an awaitable that would resolve to an asynchronous iterator.

Starting with Python 3.7, __aiter__ must return an asynchronous iterator object. Returning anything else will result in a TypeError error.

3.4.4. Asynchronous Context Managers

An asynchronous context manager is a context manager that is able to suspend execution in its __aenter__ and __aexit__ methods.

Asynchronous context managers can be used in an async with statement.

object.__aenter__(self)

Semantically similar to __enter__(), the only difference being that it must return an awaitable.

object.__aexit__(self, exc_type, exc_value, traceback)

Semantically similar to __exit__(), the only difference being that it must return an awaitable.

An example of an asynchronous context manager class:

class AsyncContextManager:
    async def __aenter__(self):
        await log('entering context')

    async def __aexit__(self, exc_type, exc, tb):
        await log('exiting context')

Nuevo en la versión 3.5.

Footnotes

1

It is possible in some cases to change an object’s type, under certain controlled conditions. It generally isn’t a good idea though, since it can lead to some very strange behaviour if it is handled incorrectly.

2

The __hash__(), __iter__(), __reversed__(), and __contains__() methods have special handling for this; others will still raise a TypeError, but may do so by relying on the behavior that None is not callable.

3

«Does not support» here means that the class has no such method, or the method returns NotImplemented. Do not set the method to None if you want to force fallback to the right operand’s reflected method—that will instead have the opposite effect of explicitly blocking such fallback.

4

For operands of the same type, it is assumed that if the non-reflected method – such as __add__() – fails then the overall operation is not supported, which is why the reflected method is not called.