[Python-Dev] PEP 575: Unifying function/method classes (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Fri Apr 13 09:23:44 EDT 2018

On 13 April 2018 at 02:12, Jeroen Demeyer <J.Demeyer at ugent.be> wrote:

Dear Python developers,

I would like to request a review of PEP 575, which is about changing the classes used for built-in functions and Python functions and methods. The text of the PEP can be found at https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0575/ No substantial changes to the contents of the PEP were made compared to the first posting. However, many details have been changed, clarified or added, based on comments from the initial discussion thread and the work on an implementation.

I'm personally +1 on this version of the PEP (thank you for putting it together!), but have one request for clarification related to __doc__: at first glance, it isn't obvious why there are two different ways of storing the docstring (either m_ml->ml_doc or a dedicated func_code field).

Those technically could be consolidated by always using m_ml->ml_doc, and changing the definition of base_function such that m_ml always pointed to a PyMethodDef instance.

However, that's less than ideal when the doc string is already a Python object, since you need to convert between "const char *" and "PyObject *" when accessing the field from Python (and vice versa when setting it).

There's also a section in the rationale which refers to METH_USRx flags, which I'm guessing from context are an idea you were considering proposing, but eventually dropped from the rest of the PEP. These remaining references to the concept just need to be cleaned up.

Cheers, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan at gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia

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