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

Terry Reedy tjreedy at udel.edu
Tue Jul 16 23:46:34 CEST 2013

On 7/16/2013 9:39 AM, R. David Murray wrote:

On Tue, 16 Jul 2013 23:19:21 +1000, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:

For example, pkgutil includes classes with single-underscore methods, which I take as private. It also has a function simplegeneric, which is undocumented and not listed in all. In in the absence of even a comment saying "Don't use this", I take it as an oversight, not policy that simplegeneric is private. I think you'd be wrong about that, though. simplegeneric should really be treated as private. I'm speaking here not about the general principle of the thing, but about my understanding of simplegeneric's specific history.

I think Steven (valid) point is "Why not, then, say it is internal either in docs or name?"-- which in this case would be in the docs.

-- Terry Jan Reedy

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