Provide a hint when accidentally calling a module

[brandtbucher]

This is sort of inspired by PEP 713, but I think it's worth doing whether that PEP is accepted or not.

When somebody attempts to call a module, we can provide a more helpful TypeError message than 'module' object is not callable. Instead, we can check if the module has a callable attribute with the same name:

>>> import pprint
>>> pprint(thing)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: 'module' object is not callable. Did you mean: 'pprint.pprint(...)'?

As somebody who hits this fairly frequently with modules like dis and datetime, I think that this error message could reduce some confusion for beginners and friction for experienced users.

This is a cold code path, and I assume that this error is the most common reason for hitting it with a module object. So a little extra code (just one branch for non-modules) shouldn't be noticeable at all.

Linked PRs

• GH-103899: Provide a hint when accidentally calling a module #103900

[brandtbucher]

@amyreese