[Python-Dev] New winreg module really an improvement? (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido@beopen.com
Tue, 01 Aug 2000 13:20:23 -0500

Paul wrote:

I had no personal interest in an API for the windows registry but I could not, in good conscience, let the original one become the standard Python registry API.

and later:

I use it off and on. There are still corners of winreg that I don't understand. That's part of why I thought it needed to be covered up with something that could be fully documented. To get even the level of understanding I have, of the original winreg, I had to scour the Web. The perl docs were the most helpful. :)

I believe this is the crux of the problem. Your only mistake was that you criticized and then tried to redesign a (poorly designed) API that you weren't intimately familiar with.

My boss tries to do this occasionally; he has a tendency to complain that my code doesn't contain enough classes. I tell him to go away -- he only just started learning Python from a book that I've never seen, so he wouldn't understand...

Paul, I think that the best thing to do now is to withdraw winreg.py, and to keep (and document!) the _winreg extension with the understanding that it's a wrapper around poorly designed API but at least it's very close to the C API. The leading underscore should be a hint that this is not a module for every day use.

Hopefully someday someone will eventually create a set of higher level bindings modeled after the Java, VB or C# version of the API.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.pythonlabs.com/~guido/)