from functools import partial
from copy import deepcopy

p = partial("Hello world".replace, "world")
p("mom")
p2 = deepcopy(p)


The output I get is:
Hello mom

Followed by:
<type 'exceptions.TypeError'>             Traceback (most recent call last)

/home/kfitch/<ipython console> in <module>()

/usr/lib/python2.5/copy.py in deepcopy(x, memo, _nil)
    187                             raise Error(
    188                                 "un(deep)copyable object of type
%s" % cls)
--> 189                 y = _reconstruct(x, rv, 1, memo)
    190
    191     memo[d] = y

/usr/lib/python2.5/copy.py in _reconstruct(x, info, deep, memo)
    320     if deep:
    321         args = deepcopy(args, memo)
--> 322     y = callable(*args)
    323     memo[id(x)] = y
    324     if listiter is not None:

/usr/lib/python2.5/copy_reg.py in __newobj__(cls, *args)
     90
     91 def __newobj__(cls, *args):
---> 92     return cls.__new__(cls, *args)
     93
     94 def _slotnames(cls):

<type 'exceptions.TypeError'>: type 'partial' takes at least one argument



I am not entirely convinced that doing a deepcopy on a partial makes
sense, but I would expect one of:
1) An explicit exception saying it isn't allowed
2) Returning the original partial object
3) An actual copy (should the arguments its storing get deepcopied?)

P.S. This is with 2.5.2 under Linux (Ubuntu 8.04)

This issue is somewhat related to the same issue with pickle.
See issue1398 for the explanation.

Already fixed on Python trunk (2.7).
Fixed on branches 3.1 and 3.2, too.