Is there a way to make a user-defined Python function act like a built-in statement?

Question

Is it possible to make a user-defined Python function act like a statement? In other words, I'd like to be able to say:

myfunc

rather than:

myfunc()

and have it get called anyway -- the way that, say, print would.

I can already hear you all composing responses about how this is a horrible thing to do and I'm stupid for asking it and why do I want to do this and I really should do something else instead, but please take my word that it's something I need to do to debug a problem I'm having and it's not going to be checked in or used for, like, an air traffic control system.

Answer 1

No, it is not possible.

As you can see from the Language Reference, there is no room left for extensions of the list of simple statements in the specification.

Moreover, print as a statement no longer exists in Python 3.0 and is replaced by the print() builtin function.

Answer 2

If what you're looking for is to add a new statement (like print) to Python's language, then this would not be easy. You'd probably have to modify lexer, parser and then recompile Python's C sources. A lot of work to do for a questionable convenience.

Answer 3

Not if you want to pass in arguments. You could do something build an object that ABUSES the __str__ method, but it is highly not recommended. You can also use other operators like overload the << operator like cout does in C++.

Answer 4

In Python 2.x print is not a function it is a statement just as if, while and def are statements.

Answer 5

I would not implement this, but if I was implementing this, I would give code with myfunc a special extension, write an import hook to parse the file, add the parenthesis to make it valid Python, and feed that into the interpreter.

Answer 6

This probably isn't going to cover your problem, but I'll mention it anyway. If myfunc is part of a module, and you are using it like this:

from mymodule import myfunc
myfunc # I want this to turn into a function call

Then you could instead do this:

import mymodule
mymodule.myfunc # I want this to turn into a function call

You could then remove myfunc from mymodule and overload the module so it calls a particular function each time the myfunc member is requested.