[Python-Dev] Set options (original) (raw)

Moshe Zadka Moshe Zadka mzadka@geocities.com
Tue, 21 Mar 2000 20:34:56 +0200 (IST)

On Tue, 21 Mar 2000, Skip Montanaro wrote:

BAW> It would seem to me that distutils is a better way to go for BAW> kjbuckets. The core already has basic sets (via dictionaries). BAW> We're pretty much just quibbling about efficiency, API, and syntax, BAW> aren't we?

If new syntax is in the offing as some have proposed,

FWIW, I'm against new syntax. The core-language has changed quite a lot between 1.5.2 and 1.6 --

The second change even includes a syntax change (u"some string") whose variants I'm still not familiar enough to comment on (ru"some\string"? ur"some\string"? Both legal?). I feel too many changes destabilize the language (this might seem a bit extreme, considering I pushed towards one of the changes), and we should try to improve on things other then the core -- one of these is a more hierarchical standard library, and a standard distribution mechanism, to rival CPAN -- then anyone could

import data.sets.kjbuckets

With only a trivial

import dist dist.install("data.sets.kjbuckets")

why not go for a more efficient implementation at the same time?

Because Python dicts are "pretty efficient", and it is not a trivial question to check optimiality in this area: tests can be rigged to prove almost anything with the right test-cases, and there's no promise we'll choose the "right ones".

-- Moshe Zadka <mzadka@geocities.com>. http://www.oreilly.com/news/prescod_0300.html http://www.linux.org.il -- we put the penguin in .com