[Python-Dev] NOARGS_NULL

K D ked+python at tao-group.com
Sat Mar 3 01:51:55 CET 2007


Martin v. Löwis wrote:
> The style-guide in C is that macro names are spelled in all-caps, so
> if you see an all-caps identifier, you expect it to be a macro name.

Hi Martin.

OK, so somewhere we have:

/* NOARGS_NULL: A parameter declared in this way is present only because
  * the function is registered as a METH_NOARGS function. Due to the
  * way such functions are called [reference], the parameter will always
  * be NULL (as the name suggests) and should always be ignored. The
  * reason for this is [reference|"historical"].
  */
#define NOARGS_NULL _noargs_null_

... this is tongue-in-cheek, but I'm only half-joking (perhaps this is 
an acceptable compromise). My whole reason for naming it that way was to 
help people who might be grepping through the source to understand 
what's going on (and the two references/grep strings are in upper-case 
elsewhere).

FWIW, I'm not overly concerned about the spelling - as the SF comment 
indicated I thought that the all-caps name might be an issue, but really 
I'd rather you called it "PyObject *_" than not have it in at all 
because of the amount of work I'd have to do each time there was a new 
release without it ;)

Thanks, Kev.


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