[Python-Dev] Optimization of the Year (original) (raw)

Tim Peters tim.one at comcast.net
Tue Feb 10 20:34:41 EST 2004

[Anders J. Munch]

There is a simpler way to make sure all clients that illicitly use obitem are updated appropriately: Break the build by renaming. If obitem is renamed to obitems or obitem2 or whatever, any code that uses the old name will cease to compile.

[Guido]

Good idea. We'd also have to break binary compatibility (of the List API) forcibly otherwise we could be fooled by 3rd party extensions compiled for older Python versions -- usually we're careful to keep binary compatibility.

I think it's a bad idea, at least until Raymond produces evidence that overwriting ob_item in extensions isn't "just a myth". Not even Zope's C code does that (which is my poster child for pushing the line on Python's internals). Google doesn't turn up few enough hits on ob_item to study exhaustively, and there's no hint via doing so that any code indexed by Google has mucked with ob_item either.

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