When using setattr identifiers can start with any character

[lnenov]

BPO	14029
Nosy	@loewis

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2012-02-16.09:22:54.374>
created_at = <Date 2012-02-16.09:01:59.947>
labels = ['type-bug', 'invalid']
title = 'When using setattr identifiers can start with any character'
updated_at = <Date 2012-02-16.09:22:54.373>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/lnenov'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2012-02-16.09:22:54.373>
actor = 'loewis'
assignee = 'none'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2012-02-16.09:22:54.374>
closer = 'loewis'
components = []
creation = <Date 2012-02-16.09:01:59.947>
creator = 'lnenov'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 14029
keywords = []
message_count = 2.0
messages = ['153468', '153470']
nosy_count = 2.0
nosy_names = ['loewis', 'lnenov']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'not a bug'
stage = None
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = 'behavior'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue14029'
versions = []

[lnenov]

I am not sure if this is actually a bug.

Given documentation @ http://docs.python.org/release/2.5.2/ref/identifiers.html, the issue is that setattr does not appear to check identifier for naming convention.

See a short example below. Running on windows

>>> sys.version_info(major=2, minor=7, micro=1, releaselevel='final', serial=0)
>>> sys.version_info
sys.version_info(major=2, minor=7, micro=1, releaselevel='final', serial=0)
>>> class Example():
	pass
>>> example = Example()
>>> example.@foo = 4
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>> setattr(example, '@foo', 'bar')
>>> dir(example)
['@foo', '__doc__', '__module__']
>>> example.@foo
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>> getattr(example, '@foo')
'bar'

[loewis]

It's not a bug. The specification of identifiers refers only to the places where they appear in the language grammar, i.e. what you can put into source code. What parameters objects accept in __setattr__ is an entirely different question. Some objects may check for well-formedness, some objects may accept only a small number of identifiers (e.g. when they use __slots__), some may accept non-strings as attribute names.