[Python-Dev] 'With' context documentation draft (was Re: Terminology for PEP 343 (original) (raw)

Michael Hudson mwh at python.net
Fri Jul 15 11:37:10 CEST 2005

"M.-A. Lemburg" <mal at egenix.com> writes:

This is exactly what I'm getting at: I can see the potential use for resource management (which is what started out the whole idea IIRC), but fail to see why you'd want to use it for anything more complicated than that.

I, as a concrete example, want to be able to write:

with output_to_file(f): print stuff function_that_prints_stuff()

and have the printed things end up in the file-like object f (in a single-threaded program, foom :)

This is only a resource by a tortured defintion.

Note that hiding things away in smart objects like what you call "context managers" will not make programs easier to understand, unless the specific task that such a "context manager" is simple enough to grasp by just looking at its definition in the with statement... but then you'd not call it a "context manager".

Of course, but there's no single term to describe all these simple things, and we need a single term to describe the objects designed to be used in the with statement for documentation purposes. Consensus on python-dev has settled on 'context manager', but personally I don't much care what it is so long as it isn't actively misleading (which I contend applies to 'resource manager'), it's just something people can look up in the index.

Let's keep things simple and Python nice.

Are you arguing against PEP 343 as a whole, here?

Cheers, mwh

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