is there a way to track the number of times a function is called?

Question

So i'm trying to make a function that keeps track how many times a method is called. for example:

a = [1,2,3,4] a.pop() 

i want to know how many times a.pop() was called so far so for this example, i would get 1. Is there a way to do this?

Answer 1

This doesn't work for builtin functions, but an interesting approach would be:

def myfunction():     myfunction.counter += 1 myfunction.counter = 0 

You're giving the function an attribute, so every call that attribute is updated. No global variables needed.

Built-ins are read-only. They cannot be modified.

Answer 2

You could use a decorator that tracks how many times the function is called. Since list is a built-in, you can't decorate or replace its pop method so you'd have to use your own list class, for example.

def counted(f):     def wrapped(*args, **kwargs):         wrapped.calls += 1         return f(*args, **kwargs)     wrapped.calls = 0     return wrapped  class MyList(list):     @counted     def pop(self, *args, **kwargs):         return list.pop(self, *args, **kwargs)  x = MyList([1, 2, 3, 4, 5]) for i in range(3):     x.pop()  print x.pop.calls # prints 3