[Python-Dev] Surely "nullable" is a reasonable name?

[Stephen Hansen]

On Mon, Aug 4, 2014 at 12:12 AM, Larry Hastings <larry at hastings.org> wrote:

>
> Several people have said they found the name "nullable" surprising,
> suggesting I use another name like "allow_none" or "noneable".  I, in turn,
> find their surprise surprising; "nullable" is a term long associated with
> exactly this concept.  It's used in C# and SQL, and the term even has its
> own Wikipedia page:
>

The thing is, "null" in these languages are not the same thing. If you look
to the various database wrappers there's a lot of controversy about just
how to map the SQL NULL to Python: simply mapping it to Python's None
becomes strange because the semantics of a SQL NULL or NULL pointer and
Python None don't exactly match. Not all that long ago someone was making
an argument on this list to add a SQLNULL type object to better map SQL
NULL semantics (regards to sorting, as I recall -- but its been awhile)

Python has None. Its definition and understanding in a Python context is
clear. Why introduce some other concept? In Python its very common you pass
None instead of an other argument.


> Before you say "the term 'nullable' will confuse end users", let me remind
> you: this is not user-facing.  This is a parameter for an Argument Clinic
> converter, and will only ever be seen by CPython core developers.  A group
> which I hope is not so easily confused
>

Yet, my lurking observation of argument clinic is it is all about clearly
defining the C-side of how things are done in Python API's. It may not
confuse 'end users', but it may confuse possible contributors, and simply
add a lack of clarity to the situation.

Passing None in place of another argument is a very Pythonic thing to do;
why confuse that by using other words which imply other semantics? None is
a Python thing with clear semantics in Python; allow_none quite accurately
describes the Pythonic thing described here, while 'nullable' expects for
domain knowledge beyond Python and makes assumptions of semantics.

/re-lurk

--S
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