How to restore a builtin that I overwrote by accident?

Question

I accidentally overwrote set by using it as a variable name in an interactive python session - is there any way that I can get access to the original set<

Answer 1

You can use __builtin__:

>>> import __builtin__
>>> __builtin__.set

or simply(no imports required):

>>> __builtins__.set

For Python 3:

>>> import builtins
>>> builtins.set

From docs:

CPython implementation detail: Users should not touch __builtins__; it is strictly an implementation detail. Users wanting to override values in the builtins namespace should import the __builtin__ (no ‘s’) module and modify its attributes appropriately.