[Python-Dev] forwarded message from Stephen J. Turnbull (original) (raw)

Neil Hodgson nhodgson@bigpond.net.au
Mon, 4 Mar 2002 16:21:19 +1100

Stephen J. Turnbull:

The preprocessing hook is a filter which is run to transform the source code buffer on input. It is the first thing done. Python (the language) will never put anything on that hook; any code that requires a non-null hook to function is not "true" Python. Thus there need be no specification for the hook[1]; anything the user puts on the hook is part of their environment. The preprocessing hook can be disabled via a command line switch and possibly an environment variable (it might even make sense for the hook function to be named in an environment variable, in which case a null value would disable it).

How does this spill into modules imported from the main script? Will compiled modules need to have a hook marker, so they can be regenerated when called with a different hook function?

Neil