How to get a builtin back after you've overloaded it

One of the things in python that I'm not such a fan of is how easy it is to overload a built-in function without realizing it, since functions and variables live in the same namespace. 'str' and 'type' are built-in functions that you need fairly often and also common variable names used in programming; if you have both type() and str() will break and misbehave without it necessarily being obvious why.

For instance:

i = 1
type = 'obj'
type(i)

will result in a "is not callable" TypeError, which may not be that clear at first glance.

To get a builtin back even though it's been overloaded, just specify the builtin namespace, as shown below:

i = 1
type = 'obj'
__builtins__.type(i)

Also, if you del the local 'type' variable, the builtin 'type' will be reinstated. After that, built-ins themselves cannot be deleted, and you will get a NameError if you try.

However, it's probably best to just avoid overloading builtins by convention. For instance, I try to remember to name a generic string variable 'astr' rather than 'str'.