[Python-Dev] Proposal to revert r54204 (splitext change)

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Steve Holden schrieb:
>> Somebody has pointed out that it is fairly easy to write a wrapper 
>> around splitext that explicitly produces the old behavior on all 
>> versions, or the new behavior on all versions, depending on what
>> precisely is desired. Users that have coded for a specific behavior
>> will have to write a wrapper - whether they explicitly code for the
>> old behavior or the new one.
>>
> How is forcing people to write such a wrapper better than providing an 
> optional argument (defaulting to current behavior) to specify the 
> behavior they want?

If they pass the flag to the function, the code will stop running on
2.5 and earlier. This is worse than having code that works on all
versions. This is also whz I wondered how the flag helps backwards
compatibility: when people add the flag, the code stops working
on old versions, so it will *not* be backwards compatible.

Regards,
Martin