On 4 November 2012 22:33, Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> wrote:
On 05/11/12 08:49, anatoly techtonik wrote:
if sys.py3k: # some py2k specific code pass
Do you expect every single Python 3.x version will have exactly the same feature set? That's not true now, and it won't be true in the future.
In my option, a better approach is more verbose and a little more work, but safer and more reliable: check for the actual feature you care about, not some version number. E.g. I do things like this:
# Bring back reload in Python 3. try: reload except NameError: from imp import reload
There are certain cases where explicitly checking the version makes sense. I think that Python 3 vs Python 2 is sometimes such a case. Python 3 changes the meaning of a number of elementary aspects of Python so that the same code can run without error but with different semantics under the two different version series. Checking the version rather than checking the attribute/name would often be a mistake when comparing say Python 2.6 and Python 2.7 since you're better off just sticking to 2.6 syntax and checking for potentially useful names available under 2.7 as you describe. On the other hand if you are distinguishing between 2.x and 3.x then it is sometimes clearer and more robust to explicitly make a version check rather than think hard about how to write code that works in both cases (and hope that you remember your reasoning later). It also makes it easier for you to clean up your codebase when you eventually drop support for 2.x. Oscar