[Python-Dev] PEP 399: Pure Python/C Accelerator Module Compatibiilty Requirements (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Thu Apr 7 08:59:24 CEST 2011

On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 3:15 PM, Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml at behnel.de> wrote:

Assuming there always is an "equivalent" Python implementation anyway, what about using that as a fallback for input types that the C implementation cannot deal with?

Or would it be a larger surprise for users if the code ran slower when passing in a custom type than if it throws an exception instead?

It often isn't practical - the internal structures of the two don't necessarily play nicely together.

It's an interesting idea for heapq in particular, though. (The C module fairly could easily alias the Python versions with underscore prefixes, then fallback to those instead of raising an error if PyList_CheckExact fails).

Cheers, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia

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