New submission from Julian <python_org(a)somethinkodd.com>:
Since Python 2.6, httplib has offered a timeout parameter for fetches. As the documentation explains, if this parameter is not provided, it uses the global default.
What the document doesn't explain is httplib builds on top of the socket library. The socket library has a default timeout of None (i.e. forever). This may be an appropriate default for general sockets, but it is a poor default for httplib; typical http clients would use a timeout in the 2-10 second range.
This problem is propagated up to urllib2, which sits on httplib, and further obscures that the default might be unsuitable.
>From an inspection of the manuals, Python 3.0.1 suffers from the same problem except, the names have changed. urllib.response sits on http.client.
I, for one, made a brutal mistake of assuming that the "global default" would be some reasonable default for fetching web pages; I didn't have any specific timeout in mind, and was happy for the library to take care of it. Several million successful http downloads later, my server application thread froze waiting forever when talking to a recalcitrant web-server. I imagine others have fallen for the same trap.
While an ideal solution would be for httplib and http.client to use a more generally acceptable default, I can see it might be far too late to make such a change without breaking existing applications. Failing that, I would recommend that the documentation for httplib, urllib, urllib2, http.client and urllib.request (+ any other similar libraries sitting on socket? FTP, SMTP?) be changed to highlight that the default global timeout, sans deliberate override, is to wait a surprisingly long time.
----------
assignee: docs@python
components: Documentation, Library (Lib)
messages: 104763
nosy: docs@python, oddthinking
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: Unexpected default timeout in http-client-related libraries
type: behavior
versions: Python 2.6, Python 2.7, Python 3.1
_______________________________________
Python tracker <report(a)bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue8595>
_______________________________________
New submission from anatoly techtonik <techtonik(a)gmail.com>:
'naive' and 'aware' are key datetime types - they need a proper definition and anchor for crossrefences. If you take a look at http://docs.python.org/library/datetime.html - the definition of distinction between them is too vague and this seeds of uncertainty grow through the rest of the doc. It is not said how to make non-naive object, how to detect if object of naive or aware. All this stuff is very important for troubleshooting datetims issues in Python projects. It needs a proper documentation.
----------
assignee: docs@python
components: Documentation
messages: 106524
nosy: docs@python, techtonik
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: datetime naive and aware types should have a well-defined definition that can be cross-referenced
_______________________________________
Python tracker <report(a)bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue8822>
_______________________________________
New submission from Terry J. Reedy <tjreedy(a)udel.edu>:
In 3.3. Special method names, 'object' is used as a pseudo class name to prefix all the special method entries. This conflicts with the usual two Python meanings.
1. 'object' is the name of a specific class. So the entry for object.__getattribute__(self, name) says to avoid circularity by calling
object.__getattribute__(self, name), which looks circular and requires a bit a mental work by the reader to properly understand. Ditto for
object.__setattr__(self, name, value) calling
object.__setattr__(self, name, value)
2. Non-specifically, 'object' is usually understood to mean any Python object, not just a class. But the signatures as written require that 'object' specifically be a class and 'object' does not convey that.
So for both reasons, I propose that the pseudoname 'object' be replaces with 'class' or 'someclass'
----------
assignee: docs@python
components: Documentation
messages: 113194
nosy: docs@python, georg.brandl, terry.reedy
priority: normal
severity: normal
stage: needs patch
status: open
title: Replace confusing pseudoname 'object' in special methods section.
versions: Python 3.2
_______________________________________
Python tracker <report(a)bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue9538>
_______________________________________
New submission from Campbell Barton <ideasman42(a)gmail.com>:
Some parts of the python api expect __main__ module dictionary to be the namespace when executing a script, this is true when running a python script from the python binary but NOT true when running a compiled script from the C/API which can lead to bugs which are not easy to solve unless the C/API author knows this.
----------
assignee: docs@python
components: Documentation
files: doc_py3_main_mod.diff
keywords: patch
messages: 112706
nosy: docs@python, ideasman42
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: Python C/API Execution namespace undocumented. (patch included)
type: behavior
versions: Python 3.2
Added file: http://bugs.python.org/file18357/doc_py3_main_mod.diff
_______________________________________
Python tracker <report(a)bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue9499>
_______________________________________
New submission from Craig McQueen <python(a)craig.mcqueen.id.au>:
I have just been trying to figure out how string interpolation works for "%s", when Unicode strings are involved. It seems it's a bit complicated, but the Python documentation doesn't really describe it. It just says %s "converts any Python object using str()".
Here is what I have found (I think), and it could be worth improving the documentation of this somehow.
Example 1:
"%s" % test_object
>From what I can tell, in this case:
1. test_object.__str__() is called.
2. If test_object.__str__() returns a string object, then that is substituted.
3. If test_object.__str__() returns a Unicode object (for some reason), then test_object.__unicode__() is called, then _that_ is substituted instead. The output string is turned into Unicode. This behaviour is surprising.
[Note that the call to test_object.__str__() is not the same as str(test_object), because the former can return a Unicode object without causing an error, while the latter, if it gets a Unicode object, will then try to encode('ascii') to a string, possibly generating a UnicodeEncodeError exception.]
Example 2:
u"%s" % test_object
In this case:
1. test_object.__unicode__() is called, if it exists, and the result is substituted. The output string is Unicode.
2. If test_object.__unicode__() doesn't exist, then test_object.__str__() is called instead, converted to Unicode, and substituted. The output string is Unicode.
Example 3:
"%s %s" % (u'unicode', test_object)
In this case:
1. The first substitution causes the output string to be Unicode.
2. It seems that (1) causes the second substitution to follow the same rules as Example 2. This is a little surprising.
----------
assignee: docs@python
components: Documentation
messages: 109516
nosy: cmcqueen1975, docs@python
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: Improve docs for string interpolation "%s" re Unicode strings
versions: Python 2.7
_______________________________________
Python tracker <report(a)bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue9196>
_______________________________________
New submission from anatoly techtonik <techtonik(a)gmail.com>:
The abundance of methods and hierarchy depth of various servers from "Internet Protocols and Support" section makes it extremely hard to navigate information. You need a strong OOP background to be able to use this doc effectively, as examples are not intuitive otherwise.
Usually you need a decent IDE (such as Eclipse) to get a picture of class hierarchy and a table of all available methods with a mark where they were inherited from.
Such table (at least Class Hierarchy view screenshot from Eclipse) should be available in reference for descendant classes.
----------
assignee: docs@python
components: Documentation
messages: 107321
nosy: docs@python, techtonik
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: *HTTPServer need a summary page with API inheritance table
versions: Python 2.7, Python 3.1, Python 3.2
_______________________________________
Python tracker <report(a)bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue8940>
_______________________________________
New submission from Terry J. Reedy <tjreedy(a)udel.edu>:
This doc improvement suggestion is inspired by #991196 (and subsequent duplicates) and the current discussion on py-dev in the thread
'variable name resolution in exec is incorrect'
(which is not a correct claim). I believe there is consensus that the doc for exec needs improving.
My suggestion (which others may amend) is that the following paragraph (from the 3.x builtin functions exec entry)
"In all cases, if the optional parts are omitted, the code is executed in the current scope. If only globals is provided, it must be a dictionary, which will be used for both the global and the local variables. If globals and locals are given, they are used for the global and local variables, respectively. If provided, locals can be any mapping object."
have these two sentences added:
"If only globals is provided or if onedict is provided as both globals and locals, the code is executed in a new top-level scope. If different objects are given as globals and locals, the code is executed as if it were in a class statement in a new top-level scope."
----------
assignee: docs@python
components: Documentation
messages: 106552
nosy: docs@python, tjreedy
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: Improve documentation of exec
versions: Python 2.6, Python 2.7, Python 3.1, Python 3.2
_______________________________________
Python tracker <report(a)bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue8824>
_______________________________________
New submission from pengyu.ut <pengyu.ut(a)gmail.com>:
Current pdf version of python documents don't have bookmarks for
sussubsection. For example, there is no bookmark for the following
section in python_2.6.5_reference.pdf. Also the bookmarks don't have
section numbers in them. I suggest to include the section numbers.
Could these features be added in future release of python document.
3.4.1 Basic customization
----------
assignee: docs@python
components: Documentation
messages: 108334
nosy: docs@python, pengyu.ut
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: Adding additional level of bookmarks and section numbers in python pdf documents.
versions: Python 2.6
_______________________________________
Python tracker <report(a)bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue9056>
_______________________________________
New submission from Alexander Belopolsky <belopolsky(a)users.sourceforge.net>:
I am opening this to supersede issue7229. See discussion following msg107148.
In many places offsets representing the difference between local time and UTC are described as minutes or seconds east or west of UTC. This is not correct because UTC is not a place and minutes and seconds don't measure distance in this context. Replacing UTC with the Prime Meridian will not fix that because some regions in the western hemisphere use positive offsets from UTC. or example, Madrid is at 3° 42' West, but uses Central European Time which is UTC+1.
I believe geographical references in the python documentation are irrelevant. What users are interested in is how to convert local time to UTC and UTC to local time rather than what is the sign of time.timezone in Madrid.
I suggest the following wording for time.timezone description:
time.timezone: The number of seconds one must add to the local time to arrive at UTC.
Similarly, tzinfo.utcoffset() can be defined as "Returns timedelta one must add to UTC to arrive at local time."
----------
assignee: docs@python
components: Documentation
keywords: easy
messages: 110774
nosy: belopolsky, docs@python
priority: normal
severity: normal
stage: needs patch
status: open
title: Don't use east/west of UTC in date/time documentation
type: feature request
versions: Python 3.2
_______________________________________
Python tracker <report(a)bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue9305>
_______________________________________
New submission from Jay T <jaytula(a)gmail.com>:
I want to create a custom interactive shell where I continually do
parse_args. Like the following:
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
command = raw_input()
while(True):
args = parser.parse_args(shlex.split(command))
# Do some magic stuff
command = raw_input()
The problem is that if I give it invalid input, it errors and exits
with a help message.
I learned from argparse-users group that you can override the exit method like the following:
class MyParser(ArgumentParser):
def exit(self, status=0, message=None):
# do whatever you want here
I would be nice to have this usage documented perhaps along with best practices for doing help messages in this scenario.
----------
assignee: docs@python
components: Documentation
messages: 117287
nosy: docs@python, jayt
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: Documentation for argparse interactive use
type: feature request
versions: Python 2.7
_______________________________________
Python tracker <report(a)bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue9938>
_______________________________________