What is a “callable”?

Question

Now that it\'s clear what a metaclass is, there is an associated concept that I use all the time without knowing what it really means.

I suppose everybody made once

Answer 1

callables implement the __call__ special method so any object with such a method is callable.

Answer 2

Quite simply, a "callable" is something that can be called like a method. The built in function "callable()" will tell you whether something appears to be callable, as will checking for a call property. Functions are callable as are classes, class instances can be callable. See more about this here and here.

Answer 3

A callable is an object allows you to use round parenthesis ( ) and eventually pass some parameters, just like functions.

Every time you define a function python creates a callable object. In example, you could define the function func in these ways (it's the same):

class a(object):
    def __call__(self, *args):
        print 'Hello'

func = a()

# or ... 
def func(*args):
    print 'Hello'

You could use this method instead of methods like doit or run, I think it's just more clear to see obj() than obj.doit()

Answer 4

From Python's sources object.c:

/* Test whether an object can be called */

int
PyCallable_Check(PyObject *x)
{
    if (x == NULL)
        return 0;
    if (PyInstance_Check(x)) {
        PyObject *call = PyObject_GetAttrString(x, "__call__");
        if (call == NULL) {
            PyErr_Clear();
            return 0;
        }
        /* Could test recursively but don't, for fear of endless
           recursion if some joker sets self.__call__ = self */
        Py_DECREF(call);
        return 1;
    }
    else {
        return x->ob_type->tp_call != NULL;
    }
}

It says:

1. If an object is an instance of some class then it is callable iff it has __call__ attribute.
2. Else the object x is callable iff x->ob_type->tp_call != NULL

Desciption of tp_call field:

ternaryfunc tp_call An optional pointer to a function that implements calling the object. This should be NULL if the object is not callable. The signature is the same as for PyObject_Call(). This field is inherited by subtypes.

You can always use built-in callable function to determine whether given object is callable or not; or better yet just call it and catch TypeError later. callable is removed in Python 3.0 and 3.1, use callable = lambda o: hasattr(o, '__call__') or isinstance(o, collections.Callable).

Example, a simplistic cache implementation:

class Cached:
    def __init__(self, function):
        self.function = function
        self.cache = {}

    def __call__(self, *args):
        try: return self.cache[args]
        except KeyError:
            ret = self.cache[args] = self.function(*args)
            return ret    

Usage:

@Cached
def ack(x, y):
    return ack(x-1, ack(x, y-1)) if x*y else (x + y + 1) 

Example from standard library, file site.py, definition of built-in exit() and quit() functions:

class Quitter(object):
    def __init__(self, name):
        self.name = name
    def __repr__(self):
        return 'Use %s() or %s to exit' % (self.name, eof)
    def __call__(self, code=None):
        # Shells like IDLE catch the SystemExit, but listen when their
        # stdin wrapper is closed.
        try:
            sys.stdin.close()
        except:
            pass
        raise SystemExit(code)
__builtin__.quit = Quitter('quit')
__builtin__.exit = Quitter('exit')

Answer 5

Let me explain backwards:

Consider this...

foo()

... as syntactic sugar for:

foo.__call__()

Where foo can be any object that responds to __call__. When I say any object, I mean it: built-in types, your own classes and their instances.

In the case of built-in types, when you write:

int('10')
unicode(10)

You're essentially doing:

int.__call__('10')
unicode.__call__(10)

That's also why you don't have foo = new int in Python: you just make the class object return an instance of it on __call__. The way Python solves this is very elegant in my opinion.

Answer 6

In Python a callable is an object which type has a __call__ method:

>>> class Foo:
...  pass
... 
>>> class Bar(object):
...  pass
... 
>>> type(Foo).__call__(Foo)
<__main__.Foo instance at 0x711440>
>>> type(Bar).__call__(Bar)
<__main__.Bar object at 0x712110>
>>> def foo(bar):
...  return bar
... 
>>> type(foo).__call__(foo, 42)
42

As simple as that :)

This of course can be overloaded:

>>> class Foo(object):
...  def __call__(self):
...   return 42
... 
>>> f = Foo()
>>> f()
42