Consequences of shadowing built-in types/functions

Question

I'm wondering what could be some consequences of reusing the names of built-in types or functions. To illustrate what I mean, read the following example:

list() is a built-in function. If I create another list() method I suppose it will override the original one so that the mine will be executed instead of the built-in one. But what happen if i do list=[a,z,e,r,t,y]? Is there a risk for the built-in list type or list() function?

I know it's not good to do such a thing. But my goal is only to understand what could happen in these cases...

Answer 1

No, you will not damage the built-in list in any way. It will just confuse everyone.

You can still get the original list via __builtin__.list. Assigning to __builtin__.list will, however, break list for everyone.