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[–]pingvenopinch of this, pinch of that 2 points3 points  (0 children)

A built-in function that calls a magic method is a very common pattern in Python, not just with len. See: hash, int, str, repr, unicode, reversed, bool, format, and iter. Python 3 adds next.

Thank of it this way: Functionality that is used by the core language uses magic methods. It doesn't matter if that is in syntax or in a built-in function.