'super' object not calling __getattr__

According to this, super does not allow implicit calls of "hook" functions such as __getattr__. I'm not sure why it is implemented this way (there's probably a good reason and things are already confusing enough since the super object has custom __getattribute__ and __get__ methods as it is), but it seems like it's just the way things are.

Edit: This post appears to clear things up a little. It looks like the problem is the extra layer of indirection caused by __getattribute__ is ignored when calling functions implicitly. Doing foo.x is equivalent to

foo.__getattr__(x)

(Assuming no __getattribute__ method is defined and x is not in foo.__dict__)However, it is NOT equivalent to

foo.__getattribute__('__getattr__')(x)

Since super returns a proxy object, it has an extra layer of indirection which causes things to fail.

P.S. The self.__dict__ check in your __getattr__ function is completely unnecessary. __getattr__ is only called if the attribute doesn't already exist in your dict. (Use __getattribute__ if you want it to always be called, but then you have to be very careful, because even something simple like if name in self.__dict__ will cause infinite recursion.