On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 5:35 AM, anatoly techtonik <techtonik@gmail.com> wrote:
I thought of sys.py3k check as an explicit way to guard the code that should be maintained extra carefully for Python 3 compatibility, so that you can grep the source for this constant and remove all the hacks (such as bytes to string conversion) required to maintain the compatibility when the time comes to switch.
I agree about greppability, it's a huge help. Hence the code comment; as long as you're consistent and you pick a keyword long enough or unusual enough to not occur anywhere else, you can easily do a "find across files" or "grep XYZ *" to find them all. And if you put the comment on the most significant line of code, line-based tools will be more useful. # Unideal: # py3k try: reload except NameError: from imp import reload # Better: try: # py3k reload except NameError: from imp import reload # Best: try: reload # py3k except NameError: from imp import reload # Also best: try: reload except NameError: from imp import reload # py3k Taking just the line with the keyword "py3k" on it will tell you exactly what that file is doing. ChrisA