Is there a way to restore a builtin function after deleting it?

Question

After deleting a builtin function like this, I want to restore it without restarting the interpreter.

>>> import builtins
>>> del builtins.eval
>>> builtins.eval = None

I tried reloading the builtin module using importlib, that didn't restore eval.

>>> import importlib
>>> importlib.reload(builtins)
<module 'builtins' (built-in)>
>>> eval("5 + 5")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not callable

I also tried to assign a __builtins__ variable from another module. That didn't work as well.

>>> import os
>>> __builtins__ = os.__builtins__
>>> eval()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not callable

Is there a way to restore a builtin function after deleting it?

Answer 1

I think the usage pattern of builtins is different from what you suggest. What you typically do is that you re-bind a built-in name for your purpose and then use builtins to restore the functionality:

eval = None

eval('5 + 5')
# TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not callable


import builtins


eval = builtins.eval
eval('5 + 5')
# 10

or (as commented by @ShadowRanger), even more simply in this specific case:

eval = None

eval('5 + 5')
# TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not callable

del eval

eval('5 + 5')
# 10