[Python-ideas] IMAP4.__exit__ counterintuitive for with blocks

[Drew]

Yeah, a flag for IMAP4 objects sounds like it'd solve backwards-compatibility problems. E.g.

imaplib.IMAP4_SSL(..., commit=manual/auto)

As for handling errors with automatic commits, we should probably just defer to whatever Python IO does to remain consistent.

⁣

On Oct 30, 2017, 1:33 PM, at 1:33 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>But maybe if __exit__ is called with an exception it should roll back.
>
>In any case it looks like your proposal could break existing code (e.g.
>code that uses `with` depending on its current behavior, using some
>other
>logic to decide whether to commit or not) and that feels difficult to
>overcome. Perhaps a new method or flag argument can be added to request
>that the transactions be automatically committed?
>
>On Mon, Oct 30, 2017 at 10:20 AM, Drew <dwarwick96 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> IMAP4.close closes the selected inbox and commits changes such as
>> deletions. It is not called on IMAP4.__exit__ (only logout is, which
>> doesn't call close in its call stack) however, so:
>>
>> with imaplib.IMAP4_SSL(...) as i:
>>     ...
>>
>> would fail to commit those changes. close must be explicitly invoked
>i.e.
>>
>> with imaplib.IMAP4_SSL(...) as i:
>>     ...
>>     i.close()
>>
>> This is counterintuitive however, as the with statement is meant to
>> automatically clean up. Another programmer might come along and
>delete
>> i.close() because it seems unnecessary. Now changes aren't being
>committed
>> and the programmer doesn't realize it's because of this weird Python
>> idiosyncracy.
>>
>> Python IO such as open commits changes automatically, so I'm not sure
>why
>> IMAP4 doesn't and only logs out.
>>
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>>
>
>
>-- 
>--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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