fire.Fire() ruins fire.Fire(fire.Fire)

[ubershmekel]

Hi python-fire,

fire.Fire looked like a very interesting function so I wanted to inspect it with fire.Fire. I was surprised that the interpreter printed out a dictionary with all my locals and globals.

I'm not sure if that's what you guys intended to happen, I guess it kind of is because of fire.Fire() defined as a valid invocation which means fire.Fire(globals() + locals()). Perhaps it's worth considering introducing a different function that would do that? fire.FireThisModule()?

[dbieber]

You can certainly inspect the Fire function with Fire!

To inspect a function without calling it, and '-- --help' to your command. Without that, the function will get called. And as you noticed, when Fire is called with no arguments, it spits out all your locals and globals.

[ubershmekel]

Why does a callable class not get called?
Compare the following:

import fire
from __future__ import print_function

lamb = lambda: print(123)

class CallableClass:
    def __call__(self):
        print(123)

def function():
    print(123)

def arity(x, y):
    print(123)

fire.Fire(lamb)
fire.Fire(CallableClass) # note `inspect.getsourcefile` throws when this is used in the interpreter
fire.Fire(CallableClass())
fire.Fire(function)
fire.Fire(arity)
fire.Fire()

Unrelated rant: I personally feel the zero-arity function shouldn't get called even when --help is used. I realize a function might have a help argument but I'd rather break that argument name than the expectation of every single command line app with no arguments (I commonly use --help by itself as I'm sure many others do based on the included warning). Sorry I'm kind of using this issue as a feedback post at this point.

[dbieber]

Sorry I'm kind of using this issue as a feedback post at this point.

Not a problem.

I personally feel the zero-arity function shouldn't get called even when --help is used.

Yes, largely I agree. Currently I'm leaning toward having --help behave the same as '-- --help' (e.g. preventing the final fn/class from being called/instantiated) except in the case where the fn accepts a help argument (either explicitly or via **kwargs). I want to as much as possible allow Fire to work on any Python component at all.

Why does a callable class not get called?

This is because we currently only look for argspecs on classes and routines, but not on other objects (in your example it's the instantiated object that is callable, not the class itself).
I am certainly open to changing this behavior. It's a nontrivial change and could introduce ambiguous commands, and so will require careful thought.

fire.Fire(CallableClass) # note inspect.getsourcefile throws when this is used in the interpreter

Good catch. We should fix this.

[dbieber]

The getsourcefile issue is resolved now. 1239bdd

[1445drewran]

hi how are you