[Python-3000] [Python-Dev] Policy Decisions, Judgment Calls, and Backwards Compatibility (was Re: splitext('.cshrc')) (original) (raw)

Patrick Maupin pmaupin at gmail.com
Fri Mar 9 22:38:52 CET 2007

On 3/9/07, Phillip J. Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:

At 07:18 PM 3/9/2007 +0100, Martin v. Löwis wrote: >Phillip J. Eby schrieb: The only group the change benefits is people writing new code -- so give them a new function.

Actually, it's worse than that. The only group the change benefits is people writing new code who never want or need it to run on older Python versions.

Anybody who wants their code to work across multiple versions now needs to avoid this function like the plague, because it will be different. Not better, not worse, just different.

Also, I think there is more potential breakage than some people realize. There are lots of directories which are named ".something" and splitext is probably used in parsing these out more often than most people realize. This is not a corner case -- there is probably a ton of code out there relying on the current behavior, which, as you point out, is explicitly documented.

Regards, Pat

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