Question

How would you change a class type name to something other than classobj?

class bob():
    pass

foo = bob
print "%s" % type(foo).__name__

which gets me ‘classobj’.

Answer 1

In your example, you’ve defined foo as a reference to the class definition of bob, not to an instance of bob. The type of an (old-style) class is indeed classobj.

If you instantiate bob, on the other hand, the result will be different:

# example using new-style classes, which are recommended over old-style
class bob(object):
    pass

foo = bob()
print type(foo).__name__
'bob'

If you just want to see the name of the bob type without instantiating it, use:

print bob.__name__
'bob'

This works because bob is already a class type, and therefore has a __name__ property that you can query.