FW: [Python-Dev] Patch 532638: Better AttributeError formatting (original) (raw)

Tim Peters tim.one@comcast.net
Thu, 21 Mar 2002 17:33:33 -0500

Forwarded with permission. I'm not sure why the thread died back then.

-----Original Message----- From: Nick Mathewson [mailto:nickm@alum.mit.edu] Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2002 4:53 PM To: tim.one@comcast.net Subject: Re: [Python-Dev] Patch 532638: Better AttributeError formatting

Hello, Tim!

I see on Python-dev that you've written:

Someone has written a "lazy msg exception class" before in the core, and it may even have been me. If it wasn't me, pipe up and give Skip a nudge in the right direction (OTOH, if it was me, maybe I'll remember tomorrow).

I wrote something similar during a case-sensitivity debate in May of 2000.

You can archived threads at: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/patches/2000-May/thread.html

Relevant threads are: "From comp.lang.python: A compromise on case-sensitivity" "Patch: AttributeError and NameError: second attempt"

IIRC, people eventually decided not to include these patches because (a) cased-base warnings seemed not-worth-it, and (b) they used circular references, which Python could not at the time garbage-collect.

An interesting factoid: lazy exception messages seemed to increase AttributeError performance by about 33%.

HTH,

Nick <nickm@alum.mit.edu>