[Python-ideas] My objections to implicit package directories

[Terry Reedy]

On 3/20/2012 11:49 AM, Ronald Oussoren wrote:
>
> On 13 Mar, 2012, at 9:15, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>> I think it comes down to this: I really, really, really hate
>> directories with a suffix. I'd like to point out that the suffix
>> is also introducing a backwards incompatibility: everybody will
>> have to teach their tools, IDEs, and brains about .pyp
>> directories,
>
> Directories with a suffix have the advantage that you could teach
> GUIs to treat them differently, filemanagers could for example show a
> ".pyp" directory as a folder with a python logo just like ".py"
> files are shown as documents with a python logo.
>
> With the implicit approach it is much harder to recognize python
> packages as such without detailed knowledge about the import
> algorithm and python search path.

Package directories are files and can be imported to make modules. I 
think it would have been nice to use .pyp from the beginning. It would 
make Python easier to learn. Also, 'import x' would mean simply mean 
"Search sys.path directories for a file named 'x.py*', with no need for 
either the importer (or human reader) to look within directories for the 
magic __init__.py file. Sorting a directory listing by extension would 
sort all packages together.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy