python abstractmethod with another baseclass breaks abstract functionality
Consider the following code example
import abc
class ABCtest(abc.ABC):
@abc.abstractmethod
def foo(self):
raise RuntimeError("Abstract method was called, this should be impossible")
class ABCtest_B(ABCtest):
pass
test = ABCtest_B()
This correctly raises the error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/.../test.py", line 10, in <module>
test = ABCtest_B()
TypeError: Can't instantiate abstract class ABCtest_B with abstract methods foo
However when the subclass of ABCtest
also inherits from a built in type like str
or list
there is no error and test.foo()
calls the abstract method:
class ABCtest_C(ABCtest, str):
pass
>>> test = ABCtest_C()
>>> test.foo()
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<pyshell#0>", line 1, in <module>
test.foo()
File "/.../test.py", line 5, in foo
raise RuntimeError("Abstract method was called, this should be impossible")
RuntimeError: Abstract method was called, this should be impossible
This seems to happen when inheriting from any class defined in C including itertools.chain
and numpy.ndarray
but still correctly raises errors with classes defined in python. Why would implementing one of a built in types break the functionality of abstract classes?
Surprisingly, the test that prevents instantiating abstract classes happens in object.__new__
, rather than anything defined by the abc
module itself:
static PyObject *
object_new(PyTypeObject *type, PyObject *args, PyObject *kwds)
{
...
if (type->tp_flags & Py_TPFLAGS_IS_ABSTRACT) {
...
PyErr_Format(PyExc_TypeError,
"Can't instantiate abstract class %s "
"with abstract methods %U",
type->tp_name,
joined);
(Almost?) all built-in types that aren't object
supply a different __new__
that overrides object.__new__
and does not call object.__new__
. When you multiple-inherit from a non-object
built-in type, you inherit its __new__
method, bypassing the abstract method check.
I don't see anything about __new__
or multiple inheritance from built-in types in the abc
documentation. The documentation could use enhancement here.
It seems kind of strange that they'd use a metaclass for the ABC implementation, making it a mess to use other metaclasses with abstract classes, and then put the crucial check in core language code that has nothing to do with abc
and runs for both abstract and non-abstract classes.
There's a report for this issue on the issue tracker that's been languishing since 2009.
I asked a similar question and based on user2357112 supports Monicas linked bug report, I came up with this workaround (based on the suggestion from Xiang Zhang):
from abc import ABC, abstractmethod
class Base(ABC):
@abstractmethod
def foo(self):
pass
@abstractmethod
def bar(self):
pass
def __new__(cls, *args, **kwargs):
abstractmethods = getattr(cls, '__abstractmethods__', None)
if abstractmethods:
msg = "Can't instantiate abstract class {name} with abstract method{suffix} {methods}"
suffix = 's' if len(abstractmethods) > 1 else ''
raise TypeError(msg.format(name=cls.__name__, suffix=suffix, methods=', '.join(abstractmethods)))
return super().__new__(cls, *args, **kwargs)
class Derived(Base, tuple):
pass
Derived()
This raises TypeError: Can't instantiate abstract class Derived with abstract methods bar, foo
, which is the original behaviour.