[Python-Dev] cpython: Describe the default hash correctly, and mark a couple of CPython (original) (raw)
Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Sun May 20 13:20:05 CEST 2012
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On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 9:04 PM, Charles-François Natali <cf.natali at gmail.com> wrote:
Is documenting such implementation details really a good idea? Apart from preventing further evolutions/improvements/fixes (like the recent hash randomization), I don't see any benefit in exposing such details. FWIW, I clearly remember Josh Bloch warning against this type of documentation in one of its presentations (and in his excellent "Effective Java").
We've been weeding a lot of them out over time (e.g. by deleting them rather than updating them when they change). However, keeping them can be useful for a couple of reasons:
- sometimes we're explicitly OK with people relying on certain CPython behaviour (or genuinely want to help them understand that behaviour)
- sometimes it's useful as an additional hint to authors of other implementations
Mostly (as in this case) they're just due to the past blurriness of the distinction between Python-the-language and CPython-the-reference-implementation, though.
Cheers, Nick.
-- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan at gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia
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