Decorating a class-help

[yoniker]

Hi!

I'm not too sure why the following code is working:

class Statics():
    lock = threading.Lock()


def thread_safe(func):
    def inner(*args,**kwargs):
        with Statics.lock:
            result = func(*args, **kwargs)
        return result
    return inner


@thread_safe
def singleton(class_):
    instances = {}
    def getinstance(*args, **kwargs):
        if class_ not in instances:
            instances[class_] = class_(*args, **kwargs)
        return instances[class_]
    return getinstance

Specifically,the singleton decorator,which decorates a class,is working, but I don't understand why.
Usually a class decorator returns another class.