[Python-Dev] splitext('.cshrc')

[Josiah Carlson]

Andrew Bennetts <andrew-pythondev at puzzling.org> wrote:
> Glyph's proposing that rather than risk breaking existing code (and in the worst
> possible way: silently, giving wrong answers rather than exceptions), we examine
> what benefits changing splitext would bring, and see if there's a way to get
> those benefits without that risk.  I don't think that's an idea to dismiss out
> of hand.

Because we should refuse the temptation to guess, what about:

Rename the posix splitext to X (for some X), and offer a function with
identical functionality to the posix variant under win32, also available
as X for that platform.

Rename the (current) win32 splitext to Y (for some Y) and offer a
function with identical functionality to the posix platform as name Y.

Offer a new splitext that uses X on posix and Y on win32, but causes a
DeprecationWarning with pointers to the two renamed functions that are
available on both platforms.

For people who want the old platform-specific functionality in previous
and subsequent Pythons, offer the ability to disable the
DeprecationWarning via a module global; at least until the function is
removed in some future Python, at which point path.splitext would cause
an AttributeError .

 - Josiah