entities. Don Beaudry has used this in his infamous <A

HREF="http://maigret.cog.brown.edu/pyutil/">MESS</A> package; Jim

Fulton has used it in his <A

Classes</A> package. (It has also been referred to as the ``Don

Beaudry <i>hack</i>,'' but that's a misnomer. There's nothing hackish

about it -- in fact, it is rather elegant and deep, even though

<P>(Types are not classes, by the way. See questions 4.2, 4.19 and in

particular 6.22 in the <A

for more on this topic.)

This is exactly the same as before except that instead of type(B),

B.__class__ is invoked. If you have read <A HREF=

>FAQ question 6.22</A> you will understand that while there is a big

technical difference between type(B) and B.__class__, they play the

same role at different abstraction levels. And perhaps at some point