dir(re.compile(pattern))
does not return pattern as one of the lists’s elements. Namely it returns:
['__copy__', '__deepcopy__', 'findall', 'finditer', 'match', 'scanner', 'search', 'split', 'sub', 'subn']
According to the manual, it is supposed to contain
the object’s attributes’ names, the
names of its class’s attributes, and
recursively of the attributes of its
class’s base classes.
It says also that
The list is not necessarily complete.
Is there a way to get the complete list? I always assumed that dir returns a complete list but apparently it does not…
Also: is there a way to list only attributes? Or only methods?
Edit: this is actually a bug in python -> supposedly it is fixed in the 3.0 branch (and perhaps also in 2.6)
