[Python-3000] Radical idea: remove built-in open (require import io) (original) (raw)

Baptiste Carvello baptiste13 at altern.org
Sun May 20 16:10:15 CEST 2007

Guido van Rossum a écrit :

On 5/18/07, Baptiste Carvello <baptiste13 at altern.org> wrote:

Guido van Rossum a écrit :

Do people think it would be too radical if the built-in open() function was removed altogether, requiring all code that opens files to import the io module first? This would make it easier to identify modules that engage in I/O. -1

Will someone think of the interactive users ? What kind of interactive use are you making of open()?

Well, mostly two things: for one, quick inspection of data files (I'm working in physics). Sure, I can also use pylab.load with most reasonable data file formats. But sometimes, you have a really weird format and/or you just want to quickly read a few values. The other main use case is common sysadmin-type jobs, as in

for line in open('records.txt'): ... print line.split(':')[0]

Now, I was jokingly making it sound more dramatic than it really is. Of course, I can do import io (especially with a 2-letter module name, it's not that bad), just like I now do import shutil (or is that shutils, I never remember) when I need to modify the filesystem. No big deal.

I just wanted to point out that any cleaning of the builtin namespace is a benefit for programmers, but also a disadvantage for interactive users. How the trade-off is made is yours to decide.

Thanks for caring, Baptiste

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