[Python-Dev] New winreg module really an improvement? (original) (raw)

Paul Prescod paul@prescod.net
Wed, 02 Aug 2000 03:30:30 -0400

Guido van Rossum wrote:

... I believe this is the crux of the problem. Your only mistake was that you criticized and then tried to redesign a (poorly designed) API that you weren't intimately familiar with.

I don't think that this has been demonstrated. We have one complaint about one method from Mark and silence from everyone else (and about everything else). The Windows registry is weird in its terminology, but it isn't brain surgery.

Yes, I had to do some research on what various things do but I expect that almost anyone would have had to do that. Some of the constants in the module are meant to be used with functions that are not even exposed in the module. This indicates to me that nobody has clearly thought out all of the details (and also that _winreg is not a complete binding to the API). I probably understand the original API as well as anyone and more than most, by now.

Anyhow, the list at the bottom should demonstrate that I understand the API at least as well as the Microsoftie that invented the .NET API for Java, VB and everything else.

Hopefully someday someone will eventually create a set of higher level bindings modeled after the Java, VB or C# version of the API.

Mark sent me those specs and I believe that the module I sent out is very similar to that higher level API.

Specifically (>>> is Python version)

Equals (inherited from Object)

cmp

key.Name

key.name

key.SubKeyCount

len( key.getSubkeys() )

key.ValueCount

len( key.getValues() )

Close

key.close()

CreateSubKey

key.createSubkey()

DeleteSubKey

key.deleteSubkey()

DeleteSubKeyTree

(didn't get around to implementing/testing something like this)

DeleteValue

key.deleteValue()

GetSubKeyNames

key.getSubkeyNames()

GetValue

key.getValueData()

GetValueNames

key.getValueNames()

OpenRemoteBaseKey

key=RemoteKey( ... )

OpenSubKey

key.openSubkey

SetValue

key.setValue()

ToString

str( key )

My API also has some features for enumerating that this does not have. Mark has a problem with one of those. I don't see how that makes the entire API "unintuitive", considering it is more or less a renaming of the .NET API.

-- Paul Prescod - Not encumbered by corporate consensus "I don't want you to describe to me -- not ever -- what you were doing to that poor boy to make him sound like that; but if you ever do it again, please cover his mouth with your hand," Grandmother said. -- John Irving, "A Prayer for Owen Meany"