[Python-Dev] Tweaking PEP 8 guidelines for use of leading underscores (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Tue Jul 16 14:24:17 CEST 2013

On 16 July 2013 21:10, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:

On 16 July 2013 20:28, Richard Oudkerk <shibturn at gmail.com> wrote:

On 16/07/2013 6:44am, Nick Coghlan wrote:

Clarifying what constitutes an internal interface in a way that doesn't require renaming anything is a necessary prerequisite for bundling or bootstrapping the pip CLI in Python 3.4 (as pip exposes its internal implemetnation API as "import pip" rather than "import pip" and renaming it would lead to a lot of pointless code churn). Without that concern, the topic never would have come up. BTW, how does the use of all effect things? Somewhere I got the idea that if a module uses all then anything not listed is internal. I take it that is wrong? Gah, you're right. I did consider that, then forgot to include it in the proposed text. Rather than throwing more versions of the text at the list, I'll create a tracker issue and post a proposed patch for PEP 8.

Tracker issue: http://bugs.python.org/issue18472

When I went to write this in context, I realised it made more sense to focus on defining what a public interface was, and how that differed from an internal interface. WIth that approach, the natural flow of the text was:

I also spotted a few other oddities as I went through. The obviously wrong ones I just fixed, but there were a couple relating to exceptions that seem unnecessary or ill-advised given PEP 352 and 3151, plus the one about absolute vs explicit relative imports that I started a separate thread for.

Cheers, Nick.

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

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