Mailman 3 September 2020 - docs

[issue15533] subprocess.Popen(cwd) documentation
by Chris Jerdonek March 17, 2021

March 17, 2021

New submission from Chris Jerdonek: The sentence describing Popen()'s cwd argument in the subprocess documentation seems reversed to me: http://docs.python.org/dev/library/subprocess.html#subprocess.Popen It says, "If cwd is not None, the child’s current directory will be changed to cwd before it is executed. Note that this directory is not considered when searching the executable, so you can’t specify the program’s path relative to cwd." However, when cwd is not None, it seems like you *… [View More]

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[issue31665] Edit "Setting [windows] environmental variables"
by Terry J. Reedy March 16, 2021

March 16, 2021

New submission from Terry J. Reedy <tjreedy(a)udel.edu>: Python Setup and Usage, 3.3.1. Excursus: Setting environment variables https://docs.python.org/3/using/windows.html#excursus-setting-environment-v… The word 'excursus' is so rare and archaic that this is my first encounter with it. Could we drop it? The last paragraph starts with "To permanently modify the default environment variables, click Start and search for ‘edit environment variables’,". This part is fine on Windows 10 … [View More]

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[issue29586] Cannot run pip in fresh install of py 3.5.3
by Adrian Chan March 15, 2021

March 15, 2021

New submission from Adrian Chan: I uninstalled python 2.7 and 3.4, then performed a fresh install of 3.5.3. Running pip with `python -m pip` as per https://docs.python.org/3.5/installing gives the following error: C:\Python\Python35-32\python.exe: No module named pip.__main__; 'pip' is a package and cannot be directly executed Installation details: * win 7 64 bit. * python 3.5.3 32 bit. * chose options for pip, tcl/tk/idle, test suite, py launcher, shortcuts, add to env, precompile std … [View More]

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[issue31472] "Emulating callable objects" documentation misleading
by Nathan Marrow March 14, 2021

March 14, 2021

New submission from Nathan Marrow: The documentation for emulating callable objects with __call__ seems to imply only positional arguments are supported. For instance, it says __call__ is "object.__call__(self[, args…])" and describes: Called when the instance is “called” as a function; if this method is defined, x(arg1, arg2, ...) is a shorthand for x.__call__(arg1, arg2, ...). When it should be something like (Not sure exactly what the syntax would be here): "object.__call__(self[, args…] [… [View More]

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[issue18767] csv documentation does not note default quote constant
by Brian McLaughlin March 14, 2021

March 14, 2021

New submission from Brian McLaughlin: Documentation should note default quoting behavior of the csv module is csv.QUOTE_MINIMAL http://hg.python.org/cpython/file/tip/Modules/_csv.c#l420 ---------- assignee: docs@python components: Documentation files: doc.patch keywords: patch messages: 195448 nosy: bemclaugh, docs@python priority: normal severity: normal status: open title: csv documentation does not note default quote constant versions: Python 2.6, Python 2.7, Python 3.1, Python 3.2, … [View More]

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[issue34538] Remove encouragement to author a base class for all Exception subclasses in a module
by Nathaniel Manista March 14, 2021

March 14, 2021

New submission from Nathaniel Manista <nathaniel(a)google.com>: https://docs.python.org/3.8/tutorial/errors.html (and all other versions of that page back at least as far as 2.7) currently contain the guidance "When creating a module that can raise several distinct errors, a common practice is to create a base class for exceptions defined by that module, and subclass that to create specific exception classes for different error conditions: <code example>". It may have seemed like … [View More]

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[issue40763] zipfile.extractall is safe by now
by Va March 13, 2021

March 13, 2021

New submission from Va <d.python.dc54(a)indigo.re>: In documentation of all Python 3 versions, [ZipFile.extractall](https://docs.python.org/3/library/zipfile.html#zipfile.… states with a big red warning: > Warning > Never extract archives from untrusted sources without prior inspection. It is possible that files are created outside of path, e.g. members that have absolute filenames starting with "/" or filenames with two dots "..". This module attempts to prevent that. See extract(… [View More]

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[issue30435] Documentation either unclear or incorrect on comparisons between bytes and strings in Python 3
by ipatrol March 13, 2021

March 13, 2021

New submission from ipatrol: https://docs.python.org/3/reference/expressions.html#comparisons says that "Strings and binary sequences cannot be directly compared." That would seem to me to imply that an equality between them would raise an exception, as also claimed by https://wiki.python.org/moin/BytesStr However, that is manifestly incorrect. Bytes and strings can be compared: they are always unequal. This appears to be a result of the operation falling through to the default comparison, … [View More]

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[issue18017] ctypes.PyDLL documentation
by Marc Brünink March 13, 2021

March 13, 2021

New submission from Marc Brünink: The documentation for is not very clear regarding the usage of CDLL and PyDLL. Especially it is not obvious that you should use PyDLL whenever you call any function of the Python/C API. Since calling a Python/C API function without owning the GIL will most likely cause latent segfaults, I think it warrants a warning box in section 16.17.2.2 and maybe also somewhere prominent in http://docs.python.org/dev/c-api/intro.html. For section 16.17.2.2 I would put a … [View More]

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[issue27886] Docs: the difference between rename and replace is not obvious
by Andrew Svetlov March 13, 2021

March 13, 2021

New submission from Andrew Svetlov: Hi. On reading the doc for pathlib I've stuck with `.rename()` and `.replace()` (https://docs.python.org/3/library/pathlib.html#pathlib.Path.rename). What's the difference? Going to pathlib's source code I've figured out that methods are use different functions from `os` module: `os.rename()` and `os.replace()`. But the documentation for `os` module is not obvious too: the docs for both functions are almost equal from my perspective, the only … [View More]

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