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

Michael Foord fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk
Thu Nov 11 15:00:06 CET 2010

On 11/11/2010 13:51, Alexander Belopolsky wrote:

On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 8:43 AM, Fred Drake<fdrake at acm.org> wrote: ..

Since trace is documented and rxblank isn't covered, I think it's pretty clear it was never intended as API. I'd be fine with changing the visibility of rxblank, and see no need to change its name. While I obviously agree with your conclusion, your logic is not perfect because trace documentation is much younger than the module. How would you apply your reasoning to trace.findstrings()? It is undocumented, its name is misleading, but it is used in the wild according to google code search. I draw the line somewhere between trace.rxblank and trace.findstrings. I agree. Known / likely usage has to be the determining factor for poorly named but undocumented members.

For functions though formal deprecation is easy - so it should only be an issue for constants. (And there the issue is not whether we can remove but how we do it.)

Michael

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