On Oct 29, 2015 10:22 AM, "Brett Cannon" <brett@python.org> wrote:
On Thu, 29 Oct 2015 at 09:00 Laura Creighton <lac@openend.se> wrote:
see the following: lac@smartwheels:~/junk$ echo "print ('hello there')" >string.py lac@smartwheels:~/junk$ idle-python3.5 hello there Traceback (most recent call last): File "<string>", line 1, in <module> File "/usr/lib/python3.5/idlelib/run.py", line 10, in <module> from idlelib import CallTips File "/usr/lib/python3.5/idlelib/CallTips.py", line 16, in <module> from idlelib.HyperParser import HyperParser File "/usr/lib/python3.5/idlelib/HyperParser.py", line 14, in <module> _ASCII_ID_CHARS = frozenset(string.ascii_letters + string.digits +
AttributeError: module 'string' has no attribute 'ascii_letters'
IDLE then produces a popup that says:
IDLE's subprocess didn't make connection. Either IDLE can't stat a subprocess por personal firewall software is blocking the connection. <ok>
--------
I think that life would be a whole lot easier for people if instead we got a message:
Warning: local file /u/lac/junk/string.py shadows module named string in
"_") the
Standard Library
I think that it is python exec that would have to do this -- though of course the popup could also warn about shadowing in general, instead of sending people on wild goose chases over their firewalls.
Would this be hard to do?
It would require a custom importer or overriding __import__ but it's doable.
Is there any reason not to issue such warnings by default in the standard importer? The issue of accidentally shadowing stdlib modules isn't restricted to idle, it's difficult for idle to handle correctly (how do you define a custom importer if you don't yet have access to the stdlib?), and it's not like there's any legitimate reason to want string.py in the working directory to auto-monkeypatch stdlib string. (I know saying that last part out loud will probably just cause someone to pop out of the woodwork and explain how shadowing the sys module is a great idea and they do it all the time or whatever, but I guess I'll take that risk :-).) -n