I'm trying to understand why vars() exists. Does anyone use it? Every time I try to use it, I find it doesn't quite do what I want. And even if it did, there are more obvious and/or correct alternatives.
For instance, I want to check whether a particular name is an instance attribute. So first I write: "name" in obj.__dict__ but when I see the dunder name I think that's an implementation detail. And sure enough, not all instances have a __dict__ (e.g. if it uses __slots__ instead) and so I re-write it as: "name" in vars(obj) but that also fails if obj has no instance __dict__. But why am I looking just in the instance __dict__? Chances are I should be looking for the attribute *anywhere* in the instance/class/superclass hierarchy: hasattr(obj, "name") Or, if you are worried about triggering dynamic attributes using __getattr__, you can do this: sentinel = object() inspect.getattr_static(obj, "name", sentinel) is not sentinel which only checks for pre-existing attributes without triggering __getattr__, __getattribute__, or the descriptor protocol. Either way, vars() doesn't solve the problem. What problem does it solve? -- Steven -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
