Add __name__ and __doc__ from wrapped function in partial function initialized via functools.partial

[akhil14shukla]

Feature or enhancement

Proposal:

With the latest coming use of agents and tools they heavily depend on name and docstring of the function to decide whether to use the tool or not. When using partially initialized function, it doesn’t maitain the name and docstring of the original function that might lead to incorrect response.
And in general as well since the partial function represents the wrapped function it should have characteristic attributes of that function.

Has this already been discussed elsewhere?

No response given

Links to previous discussion of this feature:

No response

[XChaitanyaX]

I see the name to be useful but not doc as the function parameters can be passed via partial, the doc can lead to misinformation about the arguments of the function we are actually wrapping.

[sobolevn]

And in general as well since the partial function represents the wrapped function it should have characteristic attributes of that function.

I don't actually agree :)

Because partial is not the same some func, it means that they should not have the same __name__. Imagine this case:

from functools import partial

def add(x: int, y: int) -> int:
    return x + y

add_with_two = partial(add, 2)
add_with_two(3)

And imagine that you have a code like:

def add_callback(func, x, y):
    try:
        func(2, 3)
    except TypeError:
        print(func.__name__, 'cannot be called with', x, y)

with add_with_two.__name__ == 'add' you can get this result here:

• a TypeError
• "add cannot be called with 2 3" as a message

It will leave you confused and can possibly create hard to debug cases :)

So, I think that it is a common knowledge at this point that partial does not have __name__. And it does not really cause any problems. If you have such examples, please share them!

[terryjreedy]

The 'missing' attributes are documented as missing: "the name and function.doc attributes are not created automatically".

They can be copied with functools.update_wrapper(wrapped, wrapper, ...) or, for reasons Sobolevn suggested, added explicitly.
In IDLE, with the wrapped being 'add2',

>>> add2.__name__ = "add2"
>>> add2.__doc__ = "Return arg with hidden arg 2 added."
>>> add2(2,4)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#2>", line 1, in <module>
    add2(2,4)
TypeError: add() takes 2 positional arguments but 3 were given
>>> add2(

Pause and IDLE displays a call hint with the signature and explanatory first line of the doc string.

Either way, the desired result is already possible. Since all arguments to partial after the required positional 'func' are passed to the new partial, we cannot add new arguments captured by partial itself to add another method. Closing.