[Python-Dev] PEP 8 updates/clarifications (original) (raw)

Ian Bicking ianb at colorstudy.com
Thu Dec 15 03:09:37 CET 2005

Dave Cole wrote:

Barry Warsaw wrote:

I've pushed out a revised PEP 8

http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0008.html Please review and comment. Thanks everyone for providing an excellent discussion. Hopefully I have captured our current collective recommendations. I've also tried to simplify the text, while making it (somewhat) more prescriptive. The only thing I strongly disagree with is the promotion of javaNaming to equal footing with pythonnaming. We can look forward to future programs that look like this:

I don't see this suggestion...? Here's what seems to be the current text on the matter:

 Function Names

   Function names should be lowercase, with words separated by

underscores as necessary to improve readability.

   mixedCase is allowed only in contexts where that's already the
   prevailing style (e.g. threading.py), to retain backwards

compatibility.

 Method Names and Instance Variables

   Use the function naming rules: lowercase with words separated by
   underscores as necessary to improve readability.

I know Guido in a later thread seems to be going back on that, which would be disappointing to me. I think it's reasonable to loosen the phrasing a bit -- it's nearly always better to stay consistent with a package than follow PEP 8 on this point. The current text merely implies that it's acceptable to follow previous convention, not preferable.

Many people who come to Python want to follow whatever the prevalent and preferred style is, but it's not immediately clear what that is. So I think PEP 8 should as often as possible at least indicate preference. Which it pretty much does now, so we should leave well enough alone ;)

-- Ian Bicking | ianb at colorstudy.com | http://blog.ianbicking.org

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