I've been intensively consulting the Python docs lately, and I can't figure out what the object. prefix means. For example, I've been reading about:

 __getitem__()

and in the docs its definition header is written as:

 object.__getattribute__(self, name)

Here's the link to its entry.

What added to the confusion is that running:

object.__getattribute__(self, name)

raises the error:

type object 'object' has no attribute '__getattr__()'

Update,,

I also considered the possibility that it's there to denote instance of a class, but then the self parameter becomes invalid.. .

CodePudding user response：

object is only base class for all Python objects. Every class what you create will be subclass of it. You can't call its attributes itself. Referring to @Brian's comment you can read about it in built-in help.

CodePudding user response：

You're looking at the data model docs. In those docs, object. is basically a placeholder. It doesn't refer to the object class. object doesn't have most of the methods in those docs.

If there was a meaningful class name they could have used, they would have done so, but these docs aren't specific to any particular class. The docs are saying, if a class has this method, this is what the Python language internals will assume it means.

CodePudding user response：

object is the base class of all Python types.

As for the error you got, the documentation for Special method names does not describe pre-defined methods. Instead, it describes callbacks that you can define on your own classes. Also, __getattribute__ is not the same as __getattr__. When I type dir(object) in the Python REPL, I see it has a __getattribute__ attribute, but no __getattr__.

I'm not sure why that documentation prefixes the method names with object.. I guess the object there is supposed to be any object, not just the class.