[Python-Dev] Proposal to revert r54204 (splitext change) (original) (raw)

"Martin v. Löwis" martin at v.loewis.de
Thu Mar 15 22:39:19 CET 2007

Stephen Hansen schrieb:

And it'd be so easy to do it in a way which wouldn't be silent... just throw out a warning, and defer the actual change until the next release.

I disagree that it easy to do that. Implementation-wise, it probably is. However, I feel that warnings have a very high cost, and cause more harm than good. They primarily don't appear at the machine of the author of the code. Instead, they appear at the end-user's machine, causing them problems in that they see messages from a software they didn't know they are even running. They all have to chase down the source of the program, only to eventually have the author of the software to tell them that it is safe to ignore this warning (which I believe it is).

I specifically got complaints that Python fills Apache log files with garbage warnings. It won't help to issue the warning only once (although that will help in other cases): you then get the warning once per HTTP request (assuming CGI), which still can be a lot of warnings.

That said, if it makes people more comfortable with having a warning added, I won't object. It's just that I don't want to be the one to take the blame for issuing the warning, because deep in my heart I feel that warnings are a bad thing, unless they are right most of the time (which they won't be in this case).

(And, if I thought it'd have any chance of going in, I'd submit a patch to add a warning and adjust docs/tests/etc... but this issue seems ever so divided...)

You need to find a committer to commit such a change, but otherwise, I think it's a good idea. Contributing is always a good idea.

Martin

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list