Question

How can I wrap a recursive function, recursive calls included? For example, given foo and wrap:

def foo(x):
    return foo(x - 1) if x > 0 else 1

def wrap(f):
    def wrapped(*args, **kwargs):
        print "f was called"
        return f(*args, **kwargs)

    return wrapped

wrap(foo)(x) will only output "f was called" with the first call. Recursive calls still address foo().

I don’t mind monkey patching, or poking around internals. I’m not planning to add this code to the next nuclear warhead handling program, so even if it’s a bad idea, I’d like to achieve the effect.

Edit: for example, would patching foo.func_globals to override foo.__name__ work? If it always does, any side-effects I should be minding?

Answer 1

It works if you use your wrapper function as a decorator.

def wrap(f):
    def wrapped(*args, **kwargs):
        print "f was called"
        return f(*args, **kwargs)

    return wrapped

@wrap
def foo(x):
    return foo(x - 1) if x > 0 else 1

Reason being that in your example, you’re only calling the result of the wrap function once. If you use it as a decorator it actually replaces the definition of foo in the module namespace with the decorated function, so its internal call resolves to the wrapped version.