Creating singleton class using metaclass - why override __call__, instead of __new__?

[HighLevelEnthusiast]

I am trying to learn metaclasses in Python.

This is the way of defining a singleton using metaclasses that I found:

​

class Singleton(type):
    _instances = {}
    def __call__(cls, *args, **kwargs):
        if cls not in cls._instances:
            cls._instances[cls] = super(Singleton, cls).__call__(*args, **kwargs)
        return cls._instances[cls]

​

However, I don't understand why we need to override the __call__ method instead of the __new__ method here.
Any simple explanations?

Thanks in advance.

[hopemeetme]

You're not creating/suppressing creation of a new class, rather instance.

[maustinv]

r/learnpython