[Python-Dev] Polymorphic best practices [was: (Not) delaying the 3.2 release] (original) (raw)

Barry Warsaw barry at python.org
Fri Sep 17 17:00:49 CEST 2010

On Sep 16, 2010, at 11:45 PM, Terry Reedy wrote:

Based on the discussion so far, I think you should go ahead and implement the API agreed on by the mail sig both because is has been agreed on (and thinking about the wsgi discussion, that seems to be a major achievement) and because it seems sensible to me also, as far as I understand it. The proof of the API will be in the testing. As long as you think it covers all intended use cases, I am not sure that abstract discussion can go much further.

+1

I do have a thought about space and duplication. For normal messages, it is not an issue. For megabyte (or in the future, gigabyte?) attachments, it is. So if possible, there should only be one extracted blob for both bytes and string versions of parsed messages. Or even make the extraction from the raw stream lazy, when specifically requested.

This has been discussed in the email-sig. Many people have asked for an API where message payloads can be stored on-disk instead of in-memory. Headers, I don't think will every practically be so big as to not be storable in-memory. But if your message has a huge mp3, the parser should have the option to leave the bytes of that payload in a disk cache and transparently load it when necessary.

I think we should keep that in mind, but it's way down on the list of "gotta haves" for email6.

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