[Python-Dev] Re: The os module, unix and win32 (original) (raw)

Paul Moore pf_moore at yahoo.co.uk
Thu Jan 8 17:54:43 EST 2004

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

I don't know that a Python version of winreg using ctypes would be preferable over a C version. I'd expect it to be slower, less readable than the C version, and more susceptible to the possibility of causing segfaults. (As for speed, I actually have a windows registry application where speed of access is important.)

That doesn't mean I don't think ctypes is a good idea -- just that I don't think applying it to winreg would be useful.

Agreed on both counts. The main advantage of having ctypes in the core would be to bypass these "but we can't do a Windows version without writing a C wrapper round some API calls" issues.

I prefer the idea of including ctypes in the core and writing popen5 (or whatever it gets called) using it, over writing a support extension which just wraps "some" API calls. There's no way of making such an extension self-consistent in the way that _winreg is. The mix of APIs needed for popen5 is too varied. If popen5 is going to have a C extension behind it, I'd say that extension should expose higher level functions coded specifically for popen5, and be named something like _popen5.pyd. Don't try to make it generic - it won't be.

But these are implementation and packaging issues. Let's get the design right first (and prototype using whatever seems convenient).

Paul.

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