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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 01/28/2014 06:18 AM, Ethan Furman
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:52E7BC2F.2080207@stoneleaf.us" type="cite">On
01/28/2014 04:37 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 10:06:57PM -0800,
Larry Hastings wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"> .. note: if "times" is specified
using a keyword argument, and
<br>
provided with a negative value, repeat yields the object
forever.
<br>
This is a bug, its use is unsupported, and this behavior
may be
<br>
removed in a future version of Python.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
How about changing "may be removed" to "will be removed", he
asks
<br>
hopefully? :-)
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
+1<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
See the recent discussion "Deprecation policy" right here in
python-dev for a cogent discussion on this issue. I agree with
Raymond's view, posted on 1/25:<br>
<blockquote>
<div>* A good use for deprecations is for features that were
flat-out misdesigned</div>
<div>and prone to error. For those, there is nothing wrong with
deprecating them</div>
<div>right away. Once deprecated though, there doesn't need to be
a rush to</div>
<div>actually remove it -- that just makes it harder for people
with currently</div>
<div>working code to upgrade to newer versions of Python.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>* When I became a core developer well over a decade ago, I
was a little</div>
<div>deprecation happy (old stuff must go, keep everything nice
and clean, etc).</div>
<div>What I learned though is that deprecations are very hard on
users and that</div>
<div>the purported benefits usually aren't really important.</div>
</blockquote>
I think the "times behaves differently when passed by name versus
passed by position" behavior falls exactly into this category, and
its advice on how to handle it is sound.<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
<br>
<br>
<i>/arry</i><br>
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