SF patch 568629 by Oren Tirosh: types made callable.

These built-in functions are replaced by their (now callable) type:

    slice()
    buffer()

and these types can also be called (but have no built-in named
function named after them)

    classobj (type name used to be "class")
    code
    function
    instance
    instancemethod (type name used to be "instance method")

The module "new" has been replaced with a small backward compatibility
placeholder in Python.

A large portion of the patch simply removes the new module from
various platform-specific build recipes.  The following binary Mac
project files still have references to it:

    Mac/Build/PythonCore.mcp
    Mac/Build/PythonStandSmall.mcp
    Mac/Build/PythonStandalone.mcp

[I've tweaked the code layout and the doc strings here and there, and
added a comment to types.py about StringTypes vs. basestring.  --Guido]

1 files changed, 6 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/Lib/types.py b/Lib/types.py
index da0e597487..fc0fbfb401 100644
--- a/Lib/types.py
+++ b/Lib/types.py
@@ -23,13 +23,17 @@ except NameError:
     pass
 
 StringType = str
+
+# StringTypes is already outdated.  Instead of writing "type(x) in
+# types.StringTypes", you should use "isinstance(x, basestring)".  But
+# we keep around for compatibility with Python 2.2.
 try:
     UnicodeType = unicode
     StringTypes = (StringType, UnicodeType)
 except NameError:
     StringTypes = (StringType,)
 
-BufferType = type(buffer(''))
+BufferType = buffer
 
 TupleType = tuple
 ListType = list
@@ -77,7 +81,7 @@ except TypeError:
         pass
     tb = None; del tb
 
-SliceType = type(slice(0))
+SliceType = slice
 EllipsisType = type(Ellipsis)
 
 DictProxyType = type(TypeType.__dict__)