[Python-Dev] __all__ in urllib

[Guido van Rossum]

> Two things come to mind.  One, perhaps a more careful coding of urllib to
> avoid exposing names it shouldn't export would be a better choice.  Two,
> perhaps those symbols that are not documented but that would be useful when
> extending urllib functionality should be documented and added to __all__.
> 
> Here are the non-module names I didn't include in urllib.__all__:

Let me annotate these in-line:

>     MAXFTPCACHE			No
>     localhost				Yes
>     thishost				Yes
>     ftperrors				Yes
>     noheaders				No
>     ftpwrapper			No
>     addbase				No
>     addclosehook			No
>     addinfo				No
>     addinfourl			No
>     basejoin				Yes
>     toBytes				No
>     unwrap				Yes
>     splittype				Yes
>     splithost				Yes
>     splituser				Yes
>     splitpasswd			Yes
>     splitport				Yes
>     splitnport			Yes
>     splitquery			Yes
>     splittag				Yes
>     splitattr				Yes
>     splitvalue			Yes
>     splitgophertype			Yes
>     always_safe			No
>     getproxies_environment		No
>     getproxies			Yes
>     getproxies_registry		No
>     test1				No
>     reporthook			No
>     test				No
>     main				No
> 
> None are documented, so there are no guarantees if you use them (I have
> subclassed addinfourl in the past myself).

Note that there's a comment block "documenting" all the split*()
functions, indicating that I intended them to be public.  For the
rest, I'm making a best guess based on how useful these things are and
how closely tied to the implementation etc.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)