[Python-Dev] Slash and burn in Tools/scripts. Objections? (original) (raw)

Greg Ewing greg@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz
Thu, 14 Mar 2002 18:20:23 +1300 (NZDT)

Tim Peters <tim.one@comcast.net>:

Their backup code is arguable. It's good to ensure that the new file can be written before removing the original file, and good to do some form of backup.

Tools which modify files in-place make me nervous, even when they do keep backups. When writing such a thing, I much prefer to arrange it so that the new files are written to a separate, parallel directory structure. When finished, I can then look at the results, make sure they're okay, and then replace the originals with them. (If needed -- sometimes I want the results in a different directory anywa.)

I feel much more comfortable doing things this way, since if the process fails half way through for some reason, I can just re-do the whole thing without worrying about whether it will try to re-process things that have already been processed, etc.

So if you're going to make some sort of library module for this, I'd suggest you don't design it to encourage people to make in-place-modifying tools.

Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, +--------------------------------------+ University of Canterbury, | A citizen of NewZealandCorp, a | Christchurch, New Zealand | wholly-owned subsidiary of USA Inc. | greg@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz +--------------------------------------+