# \[juliacall\] Invoking functions with names not allowed by Python

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/juliacall-invoking-functions-with-names-not-allowed-by-python/134056>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Created:** [November 23, 2025, 6:46pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/juliacall-invoking-functions-with-names-not-allowed-by-python/134056 "2025-11-23T18:46:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tobydriscoll](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tobydriscoll/32/1843_2.png) [@tobydriscoll](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/tobydriscoll)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2025, 6:46pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/juliacall-invoking-functions-with-names-not-allowed-by-python/134056/1 "2025-11-23T18:46:16Z")

</div>

I’d like to make a Python wrapper for a Julia package that implements methods for Base operators like `+` and `*`, among others. The wrapper class should use `juliacall` to create the object and then simply pass method calls through.

For example, let me create a `Foo` type in Julia that implements `length`:

```python
import juliacall
jl = juliacall.newmodule("PyFoo")
jl.seval("struct Foo; a; end; Base.length(::Foo) = 1")

class JuliaFoo:
    def __init__ (self, x):
        self.julia = jl.Foo(x)
        self.x = x
    def length(self):
        return jl.length(self.julia)

```

Then I can do `JuliaFoo(5).length()` all day long. But if I want to define addition, I don’t know how to refer to `+` within the Julia module:

```python
import juliacall
jl = juliacall.newmodule("PyFoo")
jl.seval("struct Foo; a; end; Base.:+(foo::Foo, x) = foo.a + x")

class JuliaFoo:
    def __init__ (self, x):
        self.julia = jl.Foo(x)
        self.x = x
    def __add__ (self, y):
        return jl.+(self.julia, y) # NOT ALLOWED

```

What’s the right way to do this?

What’s weird is that I can see lots of unicode when I autocomplete on `jl.`+Tab, but can’t refer to all of them in the Python REPL:

```python-repl
>>> jl.÷
  File "<stdin>", line 1
    jl.÷
       ^
SyntaxError: invalid character '÷' (U+00F7)
>>> jl.π
Julia: π = 3.1415926535897...
>>> jl.√
  File "<stdin>", line 1
    jl.√
       ^
SyntaxError: invalid character '√' (U+221A)

```

I know that Python is limited to “letter-like” unicode characters, but _somehow_ those things are defined.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![greatpet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e495f1/32.png) [@greatpet](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/greatpet)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2025, 10:52pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/juliacall-invoking-functions-with-names-not-allowed-by-python/134056/2 "2025-11-23T22:52:48Z")

</div>

You can do this:

```python
>>> from juliacall import Main as jl
>>> julia_add = getattr(jl, "+")
>>> julia_add(1, 2)
3
>>> getattr(jl, "+")(1, 2)
3

```

With Python in general (not just with juliacall), you cannot use the normal dot syntax to access attributes with special characters that are illegal for identifiers.