On Wed, 24 May 2000, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
Peter Funk <pf@artcom-gmbh.de>:
BTW: import.c contains the following comment: /* XXX Perhaps the magic number should be frozen and a version field added to the .pyc file header? */
Judging from my decade long experience with exotic image and CAD data formats I think this is always the way to go for binary data files. Using this method newer versions of a program can always recognize the file format version and convert files generated by older versions in an appropriate way.
I have similar experience, notably with hacking graphics file formats. I concur with this recommendation.
One more +1 here. In another thread (right now, actually), I'm discussing how you can hook up Linux to recognize .pyc files and directly execute them with the Python interpreter (e.g. no need for #!/usr/bin/env python at the head of the file). But if that magic number keeps changing, then it makes it a bit harder to set this up. Cheers, -g -- Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/