John Skaller writes:
I don't think that is really my point. I'm interested in a STANDARD, not just good documentation.
Until Guido says otherwise, the standard documentation *is* the standard. If it isn't clear, well, <DocumentorsHat> I'm always open to specific suggestions and patches </DocumentorsHat>. I'm not being defensive here, I don't think, but the documentation has always been the standard for Python. Where there are holes, the implementation is the standard.
language specification. I want to be shown wrong about the library (when I am), the same way.
Was the above paragraph sufficient? ;-)
Because it requires testing every single function in the whole system before using anything. Because there is no definitive specification of what might work or not. Do you see?
No. The presence of the function is sufficient. If the underlying system calls don't work as described (where that's an issue), there is either a bug in the documentation or a bug in the syscall implementation. -Fred -- Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake@acm.org> Corporation for National Research Initiatives 1895 Preston White Dr. Reston, VA 20191