Python 1.6 alpha 1 released

[fredrik at pythonware.com]

Tres Seaver wrote:
> > it *breaks existing applications coded to the published interface*,

not true.  the documented interface explicitly says that
there is one single argument.  it does not mention optional
arguments.

(the example was broken, but so were other examples in earlier
releases of the documentation.  see other messages in this
thread for details)

> Consider that *every one* of the protocol modules which offers
> a connect() method uses a two-argument signature for it:  ftplib,
> gopherlib, httplib, imaplib, nntplib, poplib, smtplib, telnetlib,
> urllib.  And they all *use* the two-argument connect when invoking
> their underlying socket!

not true.  look again (doesn't matter if you look in the 1.5.2
library or the 1.6 library -- what you just said is not correct
in either case).

> No Python module in the standard library uses the single-argument
> connect, period.

*all* python modules in the 1.6 standard library use
single-argument socket connect.

> This is *not* the same case as the list.append() one, where the
> published interface was itself consistent.

why not?  after all, there were many more uses of multi-argument
append in the 1.5.2 standard library than uses of multi-argument
socket calls.

see my other post in this thread for the list of questions
I ask myself for each change in Python.  if you use other
criteria, which make it obvious to you that "append" is a
good change, and "connect" is a bad one, please tell me what
they are.

(bogus facts or double standards doesn't count).

after all, with tons of code all over the Python universe,
I'm affected by *all* backwards incompatible changes in
Python 1.6.  but for some reason, the "append" change is
the only one that makes me worried.  what am I missing?

</F>


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