I read an article about the getattr function, but I still can't understand what it's for.
The only thing I understand about getattr() is that getattr(li, "pop") is the same as calling li.pop.
When and how do I use this exactly? The book said something about using it to get a reference to a function whose name isn't known until runtime, but when and why would I use this?
getattr(object, 'x') is completely equivalent to object.x.
There are only two cases where getattr can be useful.
object.x, because you don't know in advance which attribute you want (it comes from a string). Very useful for meta-programming.object.y will raise an AttributeError if there's no y. But getattr(object, 'y', 5) will return 5.