[Python-Dev] Re: Adopting Optik
François Pinard
pinard@iro.umontreal.ca
14 Nov 2002 12:40:29 -0500
[Guido van Rossum]
> [...] One of the tasks is to adopt Greg Ward's options parsing module,
> Optik. I propose to adopt this under the name "options". Any comments?
My feeling is that Python should much avoid, for a library module, a name
which is likely to be a user variable name. This would rule out "options".
In my experience so far, the most irritating cases in Python hurding common
words for itself have been `string' and `socket'. I know that some people
write `s' for a string and would write `o' for options, but this algebraic
style is not ideal. I find that using real words, like `counter',
`ordinal', `cursor', `index' or such, yields more readable programs.
When one "imports" a module, one has to give up using the module name for
other purposes. Currently, I think _all_ my callable scripts which handle
options already use `options' for a variable name, so I would prefer that
`options' be left alone.
This is why I think Python should not offer a module named "text" for
example. As a principle for the future, let simple, common words be
available to users for naming their own variables.
--
François Pinard http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard