On 2008-05-27 12:56, Thomas Heller wrote:

M.-A. Lemburg schrieb:

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On 2008-05-26 23:34, Christian Heimes wrote:

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Isn't that an awefuly confusing approach ?

Wouldn't it be better to keep PyString APIs and definitions in stringobject.c|h and only add a new bytesobject.h header file that #defines the PyBytes APIs in terms of PyString APIs ? That maintains backwards compatibility and allows Python internals to use the new API names.

With your approach, you've basically backported the confusing notion in Py3k that str() maps PyUnicode, only that in Py2 str() will now map to PyBytes. The last time I brought up the topic, I had a lengthy discussion with Guido. At first I wanted to rename the API in Python 3.0 only. Guido argued that it's going to cause too much merge conflicts. He

M.-A. Lemburg schrieb: then suggested the approach I implemented today. That's the same argument that came up in the module renaming discussion.

I have a feeling that we should be looking for better merge tools, rather than implement code changes that cause more trouble than do good, just because our existing tools aren't smart enough.

There are applications out there that dynamically import the python dll and link to the exported functions by name; they will all break.

The exported APIs still use the old names. Just the source code versions of the APIs change to the new names and they now live in different files as well.

I believe in the past we have been more carefull with changes like these. Even when python api functions were turned into cpp macros, we provided exported functions for them; for a few examples see the function definitions near line 1778 in file Python/pythonrun.c .

IMO, we should keep using that strategy for Python 2.x. -- Marc-Andre Lemburg eGenix.com Professional Python Services directly from the Source (#1, May 27 2008)

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