[Python-Dev] Changes in html.parser may cause breakage in client code (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Fri Apr 27 02:33:14 CEST 2012

On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 5:21 AM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

Traditionally we've been really lax about this stuff. We should strive to improve and clarify the exact boundaries of our APIs better.

Yeah, I must admit in my own projects these days I habitually mark all module level and class level names with a leading underscore until I make a conscious decision to make them part of the relevant public API. I also do this for any new helper attributes and functions/methods I add to the stdlib.

One key catalyst for this was when PJE pointed out a bug years ago in the behaviour of the -m switch that meant I had to introduce a new helper function to runpy, because runpy.run_module was public, and I needed to change the signature in a backwards incompatible way to fix the bug (and thus the current runpy._run_module_as_main hook was born).

When I use dir() and help() as much as I do to explore unfamiliar APIs, I feel obliged to make sure that introspecting my own code accurately reflects which names are part of the public API and which are just implementation details.

Cheers, Nick.

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

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