How would you change a class type name to something other than classobj?
class bob(): pass foo = bob print "%s" % type(foo).__name__ which gets me 'classobj'.
2 Answers
In your example, you've defined foo as a reference to the class definition of bob, not to an instance of bob. The type of an (old-style) class is indeed classobj.
If you instantiate bob, on the other hand, the result will be different:
# example using new-style classes, which are recommended over old-style class bob(object): pass foo = bob() print type(foo).__name__ 'bob' If you just want to see the name of the bob type without instantiating it, use:
print bob.__name__ 'bob' This works because bob is already a class type, and therefore has a __name__ property that you can query.
Comments
class DifferentTypeName(type): pass class bob: __metaclass__ = DifferentTypeName foo = bob print "%s" % type(foo).__name__ emits DifferentTypeName, as you require. It seems unlikely that this is actually what you want (or need), but, hey, it is the way to do exactly what you so explicitly ask for: change a class's type's name. Assigning a suitable renamed derivative of type to foo.__class__ or bob.__class__ later would also work, so you could encapsulate this into a pretty peculiar function:
def changeClassTypeName(theclass, thename): theclass.__class__ = type(thename, (type,), {}) changeClassTypeName(bob, 'whatEver') foo = bob print "%s" % type(foo).__name__ this emits whatEver.
3 Comments
eblume
Brilliant, if very very horrifying, answer to a strange question.
Codie CodeMonkey
@eblume: Not completely crazy. Perhaps the OP was creating a function that constructed classes. I suppose that would be called a meta-factory, since a factory constructs instances. Some enum implementations, for example, might want a unique class name for each enum type, so that
enum('Days', 'Mon', 'Tue', 'Wed', 'Thu', 'Fri', 'Sat', 'Sun') returns an instance of a new class Days, with members Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun.
Antimony
@Deep in that case you're probably best off calling the 3 arg version of
type directly. Modifying __class__ is still evil.
classobjis not a good type name for an old-style class, and why you need to change that. Note that for new-style classes ("class bob(object):") the type name istype.