[Python-Dev] A Desperate Plea For Introspection (aka: BDFAP Needed) (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Fri Jun 22 21:24:43 CEST 2012

On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 12:21 PM, Christian Heimes <lists at cheimes.de> wrote:

Am 22.06.2012 20:52, schrieb Guido van Rossum:

(5) Too bad there's no proposal for adding signatures to builtin functions/methods, but understood. Larry et al. did an experiment with a mutable signature attribute to PyCFunction. He immediately backed out and removed the attribute as I explained that it breaks isolation between subinterpreter instances.

Good point. Maybe the PEP could explain this (remember that a good PEP also mentioned some rejected ideas and the reason why they were rejected).

The PEP is already complex enough and went to several incarnations. It was a wise decision to focus on the features that could be implemented before the first beta is released. Kudos for pulling it off, Larry!

Indeed, limiting the scope in this way was very wise.

Signatures for builtin functions should be handled by a new PEP. We need a way to extract or define the signatures (perhaps parse the C code and parse PyArg* signatures) and a secure way to store the signature (perhaps implement the signature class in C?). That's a LOT of work.

Agreed it's an open problem. I just hope someone will tackle it next.

-- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)

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