[Python-ideas] Changing the name of __pycache__

[Raymond Hettinger]

On Feb 9, 2011, at 9:30 AM, Antoine Pitrou wrote:

> On Wed, 09 Feb 2011 09:07:05 -0800
> Ethan Furman <ethan at stoneleaf.us> wrote:
>> +1 on ".pycache" as well.
> 
> Well, unless you propose postponing the forthcoming 3.2 release for
> that, it's probably too late anyway.

Yes, I propose that we do that now (3.2rc2).

It is a simple exercise with sed to change it
and not hard to get right.

We've gotten +1 on .pycache from:
   Mark Lemburg, Ethan Furman, David Malcolm, and me.

AFAICT, the only thing going for __pycache__ is that that
is was is already in the tree.  So far, no one has said they
prefer that name to .pycache.


> (and of course it's not "just a #define"; there are tests, and probably
> importlib and other modules relying on it; and the PEP to update too)
> 
> That said, I think it is useful that casual users of Python are aware
> that Python does cache bytecode files. It's not a complex enough notion
> that there's any point in hiding these from them. After all, explicit
> is better than implicit.

The dot-file naming convention is pretty well established.
People use "ls" much more than they use "ls -a" because
they usually don't want to see those files or directories.

IOW, implicit is better when we're talking about system files
and caching and whatnot.


Raymond