cell objects are containers for the free variables of functions defined in alocal scope. They are located in a function's __closure__ attribute (whenit is not None). A cell is a very simple object, with a single (optional, e.gthe cell can be empty) attribute: cell_contents.The C/Python API provides a constructor to create such objects (PyCell_New).However no cell.__new__ method is exposed to the pure python user. Workaroundsexist, but are hacky, and involve the creation of intermediate, unusedfunctions.Why would cell-creation be useful? because creating cells happens in pickleextensions modules designed to save user-defined functions and classes(https://github.com/cloudpipe/cloudpickle) (*).  These moudules are dependencies ofmany widely-used data science frameworks (pyspark, ray, dask). Exposing a cellconstructor will simplify theses extensions code base, and alleviate theirmaintenance cost.I propose to add and expose a simple cell constructor, that accepts 0 (emptycells) or 1 arguments. I also propose to expose the cell type inLib/types.py(as types.CellType)(*): see related issues:https://bugs.python.org/issue35900

Hi Pierre,You'll want to submit your patch as a GitHub pull request.Also your PR will have to contain:- tests for the new Python-facing API- documentation for the new APIYou may want to read more in the developer's guide:https://devguide.python.org/

New changesetdf8d2cde63c865446468351f8f648e1c7bd45109 by Antoine Pitrou (Pierre Glaser) in branch 'master':bpo-35911: add cell constructor (GH-11771)https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/df8d2cde63c865446468351f8f648e1c7bd45109