-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Jun 11, 2008, at 2:03 PM, Raymond Hettinger wrote:
"Function names should be lowercase, with words separated by underscores as necessary to improve readability." -- PEP 8
If I'm reading this correctly, then underscores are not required everywhere. Can some of these be shortened?
function:: active_count() method:: Thread.get_name() method:: Thread.is_alive() method:: Thread.is_daemon() method:: Thread.set_daemon(daemonic)
+1 on opting for properties in the specific cases here where it makes sense.
In some cases, the mental pronounciation changes and affects my perception of meaning. For example, Thread.setName or Thread.setname both feel like a setter to me, but Thread.set_name causes a mental pause and a momentary double-take (is it the name of a set?).
A few months ago, I think there was a PEP 8 discussion rejecting suggestions to make underscores required everywhere (leading to getattr-->get_attr, iteritems-->iter_items, staticmethod-
static_method, setdefault->set_default, popitem->pop_item, splitlines->split_lines etc.)
Perhaps underscores should only be used when the contracted form lacks clarity.
There are some builtins that I wish had used underscores to make them easier to read. isinstance() and issubclass() come to mind. OTOH, getattr and iteritems are already contractions, so leaving them underscoreless doesn't bother me too much. For the others you mention, well I'll invoke ZoP 12 and 13. There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it. Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch. - -Barry -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (Darwin) iQCVAwUBSFENVnEjvBPtnXfVAQIVhAQAn6liMZxAFKPmfvHp7UQLBdCEiI0rkGjR OCxaEQLxpeuHfDGMS47kVJhyAwo3skKzv9Yv1+Vuor7SaP9hAO3h4r3SO2wM9jDF jwrx6ajm9wtsTzSrh9QkYzOyegeMAfj3p8gLZ+eHiRdFHXj++biunvnn4GPl7O5x E84j8rNlWkU= =LYDl -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----