I found this problem at The Voidspace Techie Blog:
Here is it:


>>> 3.__str__()

  File "", line 1

    3.__str__()

            ^

SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Here, python thinks that the dot is the dot of a float and not a dot for an attribute.
But the following works:



>>> (3).__str__()

'3'

>>> 3         .__str__() # one or many spaces

'3'

>>> 3..__str__() # 2 dots

'3.0' 

>>> 3.        .__str__() # dot, spaces, dot

'3.0'

>>> 3      .     __str__() #  spaces, dot, spaces

'3'

the 2 last examples work always:


>>> "abcdef"     .     find('d')

3

>>> object         .       __doc__

'The most base type'

>>> __builtins__     .      object       .       __doc__

'The most base type'


For python when there is a space after the 3, there is no ambiguity. But without spaces it gives error even though all spaces are stripped/ignored as you see from the last examples.