enhanced dir?

[ravi140222]

BPO	47254
Nosy	@JelleZijlstra, @ravi140222
PRs	bpo-47254: working on enhanced dir #32408

^{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 = None
created_at = <Date 2022-04-07.22:21:22.563>
labels = ['type-feature', '3.11']
title = 'enhanced dir?'
updated_at = <Date 2022-04-08.01:33:59.720>
user = 'https://github.com/ravi140222'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2022-04-08.01:33:59.720>
actor = 'apostofes'
assignee = 'none'
closed = False
closed_date = None
closer = None
components = []
creation = <Date 2022-04-07.22:21:22.563>
creator = 'apostofes'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 47254
keywords = ['patch']
message_count = 4.0
messages = ['416948', '416951', '416954', '416955']
nosy_count = 2.0
nosy_names = ['JelleZijlstra', 'apostofes']
pr_nums = ['32408']
priority = 'normal'
resolution = None
stage = 'patch review'
status = 'open'
superseder = None
type = 'enhancement'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue47254'
versions = ['Python 3.11']

[ravi140222]

current dir gives output like this,

from collection import OrderedDict
od = OrderedDict({'a': 1, 'b': 2, 'c': 3})
print(dir(od))

['__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__', '__dict__',
 '__dir__', '__doc__', '__eq__', '__format__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__',
 '__getitem__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__init_subclass__',
 '__iter__', '__le__', '__len__', '__lt__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__reduce__',
 '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__reversed__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__',
 '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__subclasshook__', 'clear', 'copy', 'fromkeys',
 'get', 'items', 'keys', 'move_to_end', 'pop', 'popitem', 'setdefault',
 'update', 'values']

but wouldn't it be better if the output was like this,

{'OrderedDict': {'__contains__', '__delitem__', '__dir__', '__eq__',
                  '__format__', '__ge__', '__getitem__', '__gt__', '__init__', '__init_subclass__',
                  '__iter__', '__le__', '__lt__', '__ne__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__',
                  '__repr__', '__reversed__', '__setitem__', '__sizeof__', '__subclasshook__',
                  'clear', 'copy', 'fromkeys', 'get', 'items', 'keys', 'move_to_end', 'pop',
                  'popitem', 'setdefault', 'update', 'values'},
'dict': {'__getattribute__', '__len__', '__new__'},
'object': {'__delattr__', '__setattr__', '__str__'}}

???

[JelleZijlstra]

This would be nice, but backward compatibility alone means we can't change dir() to return a dictionary. What you propose would make more sense as a new function, perhaps in a package like pydoc or a third-party tool like IPython.

[ravi140222]

would adding an argument to dir be a possible solution,
like,

l = [1, 2, 3]
dir(l, categorize=True)

[ravi140222]

plus I would want it to have some more methods,

l = [1, 2, 3]

using enhanced dir should give,

{'list': {'__add__', '__contains__', '__delitem__', '__eq__', '__ge__',
         '__getattribute__', '__getitem__', '__gt__', '__iadd__', '__imul__',
         '__init__', '__init_subclass__', '__iter__', '__le__', '__len__',
         '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
         '__reversed__', '__rmul__', '__setitem__', '__sizeof__',
         '__subclasshook__', 'append', 'clear', 'copy', 'count', 'extend',
         'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove', 'reverse', 'sort'},
'object': {'__delattr__', '__dir__', '__format__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__setattr__', '__str__'}}

obtained from, (here only printing, made a dictionary in the implementation in the PR)

for j in dir(l):
    print(f'l.{j}.__qualname__')

this check fails for,

{'list': {'__doc__', '__hash__', '__class__'}}

I would also want these,

{'list': {'__instancecheck__','__subclasscheck__', '__subclasses__', 'mro'},
 'type': {'__call__', '__prepare__'}}

which were obtained from,

for j in set(dir(type(l))) - set(dir(l)):
    print(f'l.{j}.__qualname__')

and it fails for,

{'list': {'__abstractmethods__', '__base__', '__bases__', '__basicsize__', '__dict__', '__dictoffset__',
           '__flags__', '__itemsize__', '__module__', '__mro__',
           '__name__', '__qualname__', '__text_signature__', '__weakrefoffset__'}

[ravi140222]

I would like this enhanced dir to have one more feature, that is the type of these functions, so, our enhanced dir would work something like this,

l = [1, 2, 3]
enhanced_dir(l, show_types=True) # one feature is categorize which I showed above, and show_types is the second feature

which gives,

{ <class 'method-wrapper': {'__add__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', ...}
{ <class 'builtin_function_or_method': {'__dir__', 'append', 'insert', ...}

[vainaixr]

i think so one more thing could be added to it, could name the keyword as checks,
for example,

enhanced_dir(None, checks=True)

this would run a few checks on our argument, such as, whether it,

1. is inheritable
2. could be used as a key in a dictionary
3. could be passed as an argument to defaultdict
4. ...

so, for None, the output would be something like this,

{inheritable: False
dict_key: True
defaultdict_arg: True, ...}

[iritkatriel]

This is the kind of thing that people implement as a utility and publish on pypl. After a few years, if it's stable and has many users, it becomes possible to discuss adding it to the stdlib (which requires a PEP). You don't start by adding it to the stdlib.

[vainaixr]

sorry, i am new to this, and dont know much about pypl (or is it pypi?), i created a pull request for this also, and added it to pydoc.py that is this,

#91449

could you inform me where would be the suitable place for the function i created. is this the pypl url?
https://github.com/pypa/warehouse
will i have to create some package and then do something like pip install enhanced_dir, but i have only one function in it.

[iritkatriel]

The cpython bug tracker and review system are not the places for learner questions. They are the places where we actually work in cpython.

Try python-list for general python questions and core-mentorship for questions about contributing to python.