Modifying class __dict__ when shadowed by a property

Question

I am attempting to modify a value in a class __dict__ directly using something like X.__dict__[\'x\'] += 1. It is impossible to do the modification

Answer 1

Probably the best way: just pick another name. Call the property x and the dict key '_x', so you can access it the normal way.

Alternative way: add another layer of indirection:

class Meta(type):
    def __new__(cls, name, bases, attrs, **kwargs):
        attrs['x'] = [0]
        return super().__new__(cls, name, bases, attrs)
    @property
    def x(cls):
        return cls.__dict__['x'][0]

class Class(metaclass=Meta):
    def __init__(self):
        self.id = __class__.x
        __class__.__dict__['x'][0] += 1

That way you don't have to modify the actual entry in the class dict.

Super-hacky way that might outright segfault your Python: access the underlying dict through the gc module.

import gc

class Meta(type):
    def __new__(cls, name, bases, attrs, **kwargs):
        attrs['x'] = 0
        return super().__new__(cls, name, bases, attrs)
    @property
    def x(cls):
        return cls.__dict__['x']

class Class(metaclass=Meta):
    def __init__(self):
        self.id = __class__.x
        gc.get_referents(__class__.__dict__)[0]['x'] += 1

This bypasses critical work type.__setattr__ does to maintain internal invariants, particularly in things like CPython's type attribute cache. It is a terrible idea, and I'm only mentioning it so I can put this warning here, because if someone else comes up with it, they might not know that messing with the underlying dict is legitimately dangerous.

It is very easy to end up with dangling references doing this, and I have segfaulted Python quite a few times experimenting with this. Here's one simple case that crashed on Ideone:

import gc

class Foo(object):
    x = []

Foo().x
gc.get_referents(Foo.__dict__)[0]['x'] = []

print(Foo().x)

Output:

*** Error in `python3': double free or corruption (fasttop): 0x000055d69f59b110 ***
======= Backtrace: =========
/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(+0x70bcb)[0x2b32d5977bcb]
/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(+0x76f96)[0x2b32d597df96]
/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(+0x7778e)[0x2b32d597e78e]
python3(+0x2011f5)[0x55d69f02d1f5]
python3(+0x6be7a)[0x55d69ee97e7a]
python3(PyCFunction_Call+0xd1)[0x55d69efec761]
python3(PyObject_Call+0x47)[0x55d69f035647]
... [it continues like that for a while]

And here's a case with wrong results and no noisy error message to alert you to the fact that something has gone wrong:

import gc

class Foo(object):
    x = 'foo'

print(Foo().x)

gc.get_referents(Foo.__dict__)[0]['x'] = 'bar'

print(Foo().x)

Output:

foo
foo

I make absolutely no guarantees as to any safe way to use this, and even if things happen to work out on one Python version, they may not work on future versions. It can be fun to fiddle with, but it's not something to actually use. Seriously, don't do it. Do you want to explain to your boss that your website went down or your published data analysis will need to be retracted because you took this bad idea and used it?