[Python-Dev] Great Renaming? What is the goal? (original) (raw)

Peter Funk pf@artcom-gmbh.de
Mon, 27 Mar 2000 08:52:25 +0200 (MEST)

Hi!

Moshe Zadka wrote:

Yes. That was a hard decision I made, and I'm sort of waiting for Guido to veto it: it would negate the easy backwards compatible path of providing a toplevel module for each module which is moved somewhere else which does "from import *".

If the result of this renaming initiative will be that I can't use import sys, os, time, re, struct, cPickle, parser import Tkinter; Tk=Tkinter; del Tkinter anymore in Python 1.x and instead I have to change this into (for example): form posix import time from text import re from bin import struct from Python import parser from ui import Tkinter; ... ... I would really really HATE this change!

[side note: The 'from MODULE import ...' form is evil and I have abandoned its use in favor of the 'import MODULE' form in 1987 or so, as our Modula-2 programs got bigger and bigger. With 20+ software developers working on a ~1,000,000 LOC of Modula-2 software system, this decision proofed itself well.

The situation with Python is comparable. Avoiding 'from ... import' rewards itself later, when your software has grown bigger and when it comes to maintaince by people not familar with the used modules. ]

May be I didn't understand what this new subdivision of the standard library should achieve.

The library documentation provides a existing logical subdivision into chapters, which group the library into several kinds of services.
IMO this subdivision could be discussed and possibly revised.
But at the moment I got the impression, that it was simply ignored.
Why? What's so bad with it?
Why is a subdivision on the documentation level not sufficient?
Why should modules be moved into packages? I don't get it.

Regards, Peter

Peter Funk, Oldenburger Str.86, D-27777 Ganderkesee, Germany, Fax:+49 4222950260 office: +49 421 20419-0 (ArtCom GmbH, Grazer Str.8, D-28359 Bremen)