[Python-Dev] Convention on functions that shadow existing stdlib functions

[Brett Cannon]

On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 20:35, Eli Bendersky <eliben at gmail.com> wrote:

> Some background: I'm working (on and off) on issue 11015 - documenting
> the public functions in test.support
>
> Some of the functions in test.support (for example unlink, rmtree)
> simply shadow existing & popular stdlib functions, with the aim of
> swallowing the exceptions these may throw. This is confusing, IMHO.
> For example, grepping 'unlink' on Lib/test/test_*.py files doesn't say
> much about which unlink is being used.
>
> A couple of options to handle this are:
>
> 1. Remove these functions altogether, trying to use existing
> constructs (such as the ignore_errors parameter in rmtree).
> 2. Adapt a naming convention for such functions, for instance
> rmtree_silent and unlink_silent (or a similar convention, if one
> exists)
>
> Opinions?
>

The mere fact that these functions exist in a different module suggests
different semantics from those found in other places in the stdlib. I don't
think they should be renamed simply because some code imports the functions
directly instead of the module itself (suggesting they should be doing the
latter over the former). Now if the functions are redundant that's something
else entirely and removal should be fine.
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