Let's define a very simple class:
>>> class F(object):
... @staticmethod
... def f(): return "I'm such a simple function, nothing could go wrong"
...
>>> F.f()
"I'm such a simple function, nothing could go wrong"
Now, let's do a trivial no-op to this class:
>>> F.f = F.f
Surely nothing changed, right?
>>> F.f()
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: unbound method f() must be called with F instance as first argument (got nothing instead)
What happened? staticmethod uses the descriptor protocol in order to return something other than itself when accessed as an attribute. The assignment above is not a no-op, because it is not setting the value back to what it already was, but to what was returned by __get__ of the staticmethod object.
>>> class F(object):
... @staticmethod
... def f(): return "I'm not what I seem"
...
>>> F.f
<function f at 0x7f05eda596e0>
>>> F.__dict__['f']
<staticmethod object at 0x7f05eda5ce50>
Version note -- Python3 doesn't raise an exception, although the type still changes from staticmethod to function.
>>> class F:
... @staticmethod
... def f(): return "I'm protected by python3 wizardry"
...
>>> F.f()
"I'm protected by python3 wizardry"
>>> F.__dict__['f']
<staticmethod object at 0x7fd087b739b0>
>>> F.f = F.f
>>> F.__dict__['f']
<function F.f at 0x7fd087b5cae8>
>>> F.f()
"I'm protected by python3 wizardry"
