The Python standard library and PEP8

[Emmanuel Surleau]

Hi there,

Exploring the Python standard library, I was surprised to see that several
packages (ConfigParser, logging...) use mixed case for methods all over the
place. I assume that they were written back when the Python styling
guidelines were not well-defined.

Given that it's rather irritating (not to mention violating the principle of
least surprise) to have this inconsistency, wouldn't it make sense to clean
up the API by marking old-style, mixed-case methods as deprecated (but
keep them around anyway) and add equivalent methods following the
lowercase_with_underscores convention?

On an unrelated note, it would be *really* nice to have a length property on
strings. Even Java has that!

Cheers,

Emm

 

[bearophileHUGS]

Emmanuel Surleau:

On an unrelated note, it would be *really* nice to have a length property on
strings. Even Java has that!

Once you have written a good amount of Python code you can understand
that a len() function, that calls the __len__ method of objects, is
better. It allows you to write:
sorted(seq, key=len)

Instead, if you have a len attribute you need:
sorted(seq, key=attrgetter("len"))
Or even:
sorted(seq, key=lambda x: x.len)

Bye,
bearophile

 

[Colin J. Williams]

Hi there,

Exploring the Python standard library, I was surprised to see that several
packages (ConfigParser, logging...) use mixed case for methods all over the
place. I assume that they were written back when the Python styling
guidelines were not well-defined.

Given that it's rather irritating (not to mention violating the principle of
least surprise) to have this inconsistency, wouldn't it make sense to clean
up the API by marking old-style, mixed-case methods as deprecated (but
keep them around anyway) and add equivalent methods following the
lowercase_with_underscores convention?

On an unrelated note, it would be *really* nice to have a length property on
strings. Even Java has that!

Why not anySequence.len()?

Colin W.

PS Yes, I know this has been flogged before.