[Python-Dev] Convention on functions that shadow existing stdlib functions (original) (raw)

Eli Bendersky eliben at gmail.com
Wed Jul 27 15:35:24 CEST 2011

> 1. In the documentation of test.support mention explicitly that it's code > for CPython's internal use only, and these APIs aren't guaranteed to be > stable.

There is a top-level note at http://docs.python.org/dev/library/test.html, but it won't be visible by people who arrive at an anchor point. I think officially documenting test.support is a mistake. There is no guarantee that APIs are stable or will even continue to exist. Docstrings are sufficient for own our purposes.

Initially I was for documenting, but this thing with showing up in the index is a compelling counter-point.

2. Some functions like unlink and rmtree are obviously redundant, and shadow frequently used Python stdlib functions, so I would either kill them completely or at least rename them appropriately.

They are not redundant, since they provide slightly different semantics

(for example, they silence errors that happen when the path doesn't exist).

Sure, but I'm still leery of two functions with the same name doing acting slightly differently.

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