[Python-Dev] PyTypeObject type names in Modules/

[Benjamin Peterson]

2013/1/1 Eli Bendersky <eliben at gmail.com>:
> Hello and happy 2013,
>
> Something I noticed earlier today is that some C versions of stdlib modules
> define their name similarly to the Python version in their PyTypeObject.
> Some examples: Decimal, xml.etree's Element. Others prepend an understore,
> like _pickle.Pickler and many others.
>
> What are the tradeoffs involved in this choice? Is there a "right" thing for
> types that are supposed to be compatible (i.e. the C extension, where
> available, replaces the Python implementation seamlessly)?
>
> I can think of some meanings for pickling. Unpickling looks at the class
> name to figure out how to unpickle a user-defined object, so this can affect
> the pickle/unpickle compatibility between the C and Python versions. What
> else?

I don't it's terribly important except if the object from the C module
is directly exposed through the API it's nicer if it's __name__
doesn't have a leading underscore.



-- 
Regards,
Benjamin