[Python-Dev] python-dev summary 2001-06-07 - 2001-06-21

[Michael Hudson]

 This is a summary of traffic on the python-dev mailing list between
 June 7 and June 21 (inclusive) 2001.  It is intended to inform the
 wider Python community of ongoing developments.  To comment, just
 post to python-list@python.org or comp.lang.python in the usual
 way. Give your posting a meaningful subject line, and if it's about a
 PEP, include the PEP number (e.g. Subject: PEP 201 - Lockstep
 iteration) All python-dev members are interested in seeing ideas
 discussed by the community, so don't hesitate to take a stance on a
 PEP if you have an opinion.

 This is the tenth summary written by Michael Hudson.
 Summaries are archived at:

  <http://starship.python.net/crew/mwh/summaries/>

   Posting distribution (with apologies to mbm)

   Number of articles in summary: 192

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 Quiet fortnight.


    * Adding .decode() method to Unicode *

 Marc-Andre Lemburg asked for opinions on adding a .decode method to
 unicode objects:

  <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-June/015346.html>

 He certainly got them; the responses ranged from neutral to negative,
 and there was a surprising amount of hostility in the air.

 The problem (as ever in these matters) seems to be that Python
 currently uses the same type for 8-bit strings and gobs of arbitrary
 data.

 Guido came to the rescue and calmed everyone down:

  <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-June/015404.html>

 since when discussion has vanished again.


    * Adding Asian codecs to the core *

 Marc-Andre Lemburg announced that Tamito KAJIYAMA has decided to
 relicense his Japanese codecs with a BSD-style license, enabling them
 to be included in the core:

  <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-June/015347.html>

 This is clearly a good thing; the only quibble is that the encodings
 are by their nature rather large, so they will probably go into a
 separate directory in CVS (probably python/dist/encodings/) and not
 go into the source tarball released on python.org.


    * Omit printing newline after newline *

 As readers of comp.lang.python will have noticed, Guido posted:

  <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-June/015350.html>

 and retracted:

  <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-June/015411.html>

 PEP 259, a proposal for changing the behaviour of the print
 statement.


    * sre "improvements" *

 Gustavo Niemeyer asked if anyone planned to add the "(?(1)blah)" re
 operators to Python:

  <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-June/015408.html>

 but Python is not perl and there wasn't much support for making
 regular expressions more baffling than they already are.


    * Generators *

 In a discussion that slobbered across comp.lang.python, python-dev
 and the python-iterators list at sf (and belongs on the latter!)
 there was much talk of PEP 255, Simple Generators.  Most was
 positive; the main dissent was from people that thought it was too
 hard to tell a generator from a regular function (at the source
 level).

 However Guido listened to Tim's repeated claims that this is
 insignificant once you've actually used generators once or twice and
 Pronounced "'def' it is":

  <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-June/015500.html>

 and noticed that there are still some issues wrt try/finally blocks.
 However, clever people seem to be thinking about it, so I'm sure the
 problem's days are numbered :-)

 I should also note that the gen-branch has been checked into the
 trunk of CVS.  Woohoo!

Cheers,
M.