Add the word "operator" before symbolic magic methods

[eric-wieser]

This perhaps helps the reader understand why they're seeing symbols in the function name.

We should probably do the same thing for the function overloads, but I'm not sure what the appropriate prefix would be. Some options are:

• operator len(x), operator operator.index(x)
• implements len(x), implements operator.index(x)
• supports len(x), supports operator.index(x)

etc. Without some kind of marker, it's impossible to distinguish len(x) from x.len(self=...) in the docs.

[eric-wieser]

@tk0miya, do you have any opinions on what the right prefix for len(self) would be to indicate it's referring to __len__?

[johnpmcconnell]

I don't think this is necessary. The Python Reference doesn't do this when it documents operators. See dict's key access.

If you feel the need to distinguish special method implementations, I'd suggest changing something about the formatting instead of prefixing a word. The Python Reference's documentation does look slightly different for these protocols, but I believe that's because they're forced to use manual formatting at present.

Of the options you've presented, though, I favor "supports." These are typically referred to as "protocols" in my experience, and I think "supports" best describes the relationship to the language defined syntaxes and standard library defined methods associated with special methods.