python abstractmethod with another baseclass break

问题:

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?

回答1:

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.