[Python-Dev] PyTypeObject type names in Modules/

[Eli Bendersky]

On Tue, Jan 1, 2013 at 8:15 AM, Benjamin Peterson <benjamin at python.org>wrote:

> 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.
>

Hi Benjamin,

Can you elaborate - what you mean by "is directly exposed through the API"?

For example, Pickler in 3.x:

>>> import pickle
>>> pickle.Pickler.__name__
'Pickler'
>>> pickle.Pickler.__module__
'_pickle'
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