[Python-Dev] Breaking undocumented API (original) (raw)

Tres Seaver tseaver at palladion.com
Tue Nov 9 19:49:01 CET 2010

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On 11/08/2010 06:26 PM, Bobby Impollonia wrote:

This does hurt because anyone who was relying on "import *" to get a name which is now omitted from all is going to upgrade and find their program failing with NameErrors. This is a backwards compatible change and shouldn't happen without a deprecation warning first.

Outside an interactive prompt, anyone using "from foo import *" has set themselves and their users up to lose anyway.

That syntax is the single worst misfeature in all of Python. It impairs readability and discoverability for no benefit beyond one-time typing convenience. Module writers who compound the error by expecting to be imported this way, thereby bogarting the global namespace for their own purposes, should be fish-slapped. ;)

Tres. - --

Tres Seaver +1 540-429-0999 tseaver at palladion.com Palladion Software "Excellence by Design" http://palladion.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

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