Hi, In the Python documentation regarding __getattribute__ (more attribute access for new style classes) it is mentioned that if __getattribute__ is defined __getattr__ will never be called (unless called explicitely). Here is the exact citation:
""" The following methods only apply to new-style classes. __getattribute__( self, name) Called unconditionally to implement attribute accesses for instances of the class. If the class also defines __getattr__, it will never be called (unless called explicitly). 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)". """ I discovered that it is not so for Python 2.3.4 on Windows at least. The actual behavior is that if both __getattribute__ and __getattr__ methods exist then __getattribute__ is called first, but if it raises AttributeError then the exception will be swallowed silently and __getattr__ will be invoked. Note that if I forward to the default object.__getattribute__ or if I raise the AttributeError myself the result is the same. My understanding of the documentation is it that the program should just exit with the AttributeError exception. Here is the code: class A(object): def __getattribute__(self, name): return object.__getattribute__(self, name) # raise AttributeError() def __getattr__(self, name): return 42 if __name__ == '__main__': a = A() print a.x Here is the Output: 42 -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list