Question

EDIT

I actually called object.__new__(cls), and I didn’t realize that by this I built an object of class cls! Thanks for pointing this out to me.

ORIGINAL QUESTION

The documentation says

If new() does not return an
instance of cls, then the new
instance’s init() method will not
be invoked.

However, when I return object.__new__() from cls.__new__(), the __init__() is still invoked. I wouldn’t consider an instance of object to qualify as an instance of cls. What am I missing?

Answer 1

Cannot reproduce your observation:

>>> class cls(object):
...   def __new__(cls):
...     return object.__new__(object)
...   def __init__(self):
...     print 'in __init__'
... 
>>> x = cls()
>>> 

As you see, cls.__init__ isn’t executing.

How are you calling object.__new__ (and, btw, why are you?-).