[Python-Dev] folding cElementTree behind ElementTree in 3.3

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:41:17 +0200
Eli Bendersky <eliben at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 03:59, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 11:39 AM, Eli Bendersky <eliben at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > So the two choices here are either change the documentation or the C
> > > implementation to actually make Element a class. The first is of course
> > > simpler. However, someone somewhere may have written code that knowingly
> > > forces the Python implementation to be used and subclasses Element. Such
> > > code will break in 3.3, so it probably makes sense to invest in making
> > > Element a class in the C implementation as well.
> >
> > Yeah, that's my take as well (especially since, in 3.2 and earlier,
> > "forcing" use of the pure Python version was just a matter of
> > importing ElementTree instead of cElementTree).
> >
> >
> I can't fathom why someone would do it though, since bar tiny differences
> (like this one) cET is just a faster ET and it's available practically
> everywhere with CPython. I mean, is it really important to be able to
> subclass ET.Element? What goal does it serve?

It probably wouldn't be very difficult to make element_new() the tp_new
of Element_Type, and expose that type as "Element".
That would settle the issue nicely and avoid compatibility concerns :)

Regards

Antoine.