[Python-Dev] PEP 3144 review. (original) (raw)

Paul Moore p.f.moore at gmail.com
Wed Sep 16 13:04:07 CEST 2009

2009/9/16 Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info>:

I've been skimming emails in this thread, since most of them go over my head and I have no current need for an ipaddress module.

Same here.

As an outsider to this argument, and judging from the lack of agreement here, it seems to me that some (many? most?) developers who have need of ipaddress functions are a little unclear about the difference, or lack thereof, between addresses and networks. Is it our aim to pander to such confusion, and have a module which will Just Work for such users, even at the risk of sometimes accepting invalid input. Or is it to have a module which is strict and forces the user to Do The Right Thing, even at the cost of being less easy to use?

For what it's worth, it seems to me that it would be better to have a strict module in the standard lib, and leave the DWIM code to third parties.

As a non-expert, I find the confusion between network, address, address with mask, etc to be extremely unhelpful. I haven't looked to confirm if it's a confusion that only exists in the discussion, or if it's in the code as well. However, from my POV, I'd rather have a module that made the concepts clear and unambiguous, effectively educating me in the details of correct usage while I used it, rather than one that catered to my muddled thinking and allowed me to remain confused.

Of course, the discussion seems to imply that even the experts have a confused view, so maybe I'm being too ambitious here :-)

Paul.

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