[Python-Dev] PEP 292 for Python 2.4 (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at iinet.net.au
Wed Jul 14 11:50:35 CEST 2004

François Pinard wrote:

I know that string' and socket' exist, despite string' is evanescent,_ _but they surely forced users at choosing other identifiers where string' and socket' would have been perfect. It is very good news that, now_ _in Python 2.3, string' is unneeded most of times. Let us not repeat previous mistakes, or even nail them further by trying to be compatible with them.

I would suggest that bare type names are rarely appropriate for use a variable names, except in toy examples.

If I'm reading someone else's code, and they create a string or a socket, I want to know what it is for, rather than the mere fact this it is a string or a socket.

If the type is all that is important, then prepending some simple word such as 'a_string' or 'the_string' or 'my_string' makes it clear to the maintainer that the object doesn't really have any significant semantic meaning beyond its type.

Regards, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan | Brisbane, Australia Email: ncoghlan at email.com | Mobile: +61 409 573 268

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