[Python-Dev] Fast access to __builtins__

[Jeremy Hylton]

On Thu, 2003-03-27 at 23:15, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > I really like this idea.  If a patch appeared on SF soon, do you think
> > 2.3 could include a warning for code that violates the rule?
> 
> Maybe.  Though you probably would only want to warn when this is done
> to a .py module -- C extensions should be exempt.  And the warning
> should only warn about inserting names that are actually builtins.

It seems like C extensions pose thorny problems that need to be solved. 
In particular, the C API says that module's have a dictionary and that
adding a key creates global variable in the module.  We'll have to break
this one way or another, because we don't want to allow C extensions to
add globals that shadow builtins.  Right?

There's a similar problem for Python code, but I imagine it's easy to
come up with a dict proxy with the necessary restrictions along the
lines of a new-style class dict proxy.

How do we break the C API?  There's lots of extension code that relies
on getting the dict.  My first guess is to add an exception that says
setting a name that shadows a builtin has no effect.  Then extend the
getattr code and the module-dict-proxy to ignore those names.

Jeremy