[Python-Dev] PEP 399: Pure Python/C Accelerator Module Compatibiilty Requirements

[Terry Reedy]

On 4/6/2011 1:24 PM, Maciej Fijalkowski wrote:
>> No worries, it wasn't even my code.  Someone
>> donated it.  The was a discusion on python-dev
>> and collective agreement to allow it to have
>> semantic differences that would let it run faster.
>> IIRC, the final call was made by Uncle Timmy.
...
> And, for this module, a decision was made for the C code to support
> only lists eventhough the pure python version supports any sequence."

I believe that at the time of that decision, the Python code was only 
intended for humans, like the Python (near) equivalents in the itertools 
docs to C-coded itertool functions. Now that we are aiming to have 
stdlib Python code be a reference implementation for all interpreters, 
that decision should be revisited. Either the C code should be 
generalized to sequences or the Python code specialized to lists, making 
sure the doc matches either way.

> The idea of the PEP is for C code to be guaranteed to be the same as
> Python where it matters to people.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy