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2013/1/1 Eli Bendersky <eliben@gmail.com>:

> Hello and happy 2013,
\>
\> Something I noticed earlier today is that some C versions of stdlib modules
\> define their name similarly to the Python version in their PyTypeObject.
\> Some examples: Decimal, xml.etree's Element. Others prepend an understore,
\> like \_pickle.Pickler and many others.
\>
\> What are the tradeoffs involved in this choice? Is there a "right" thing for
\> types that are supposed to be compatible (i.e. the C extension, where
\> available, replaces the Python implementation seamlessly)?
\>
\> I can think of some meanings for pickling. Unpickling looks at the class
\> name to figure out how to unpickle a user-defined object, so this can affect
\> the pickle/unpickle compatibility between the C and Python versions. What
\> else?

I don't it's terribly important except if the object from the C module
is directly exposed through the API it's nicer if it's \_\_name\_\_
doesn't have a leading underscore.