Question

Is there any way to have a property and a method with the same name?
I mean a property that can be used the usual way and to be callable at the same time?
Like this:

>>> b = Book()
>>> b.pages
123
>>> b.pages()
123
>>> b.pages(including_toc=False)
123
>>> b.pages(including_toc=True)
127

Answer 1

No, you can’t.

() always calls an object from the expression on its left-hand side.

What this means is, that b.pages() can be read as follows:

_tmp = b.pages
_tmp()

As you can see, methods are attributes.

What you could (but shouldn’t) do is wrap integers in some custom class and provide a __call__ method… but I would advise against such black magic.