Encapsulation vs. code reuse?

[Skip Montanaro]

    Stefan> - How should one (not?) use undocumented attributes of a module,
    Stefan>   class etc.?

In general, objects that begin with an underscore should be considered
unpublished and subject to change.

    Stefan> For example, I happened to need the translation of a shell-style
    Stefan> glob to a regular expression. Fortunately, exactly this is
    Stefan> contained in the fnmatch module.

If the module comes with the core distribution, assume it just hasn't been
documented.  You might chip in by documenting it in LaTeX (or plain ASCII is
LaTeX is unfamiliar to you), then submitting it as a patch to the
documentation using the SourceForge patch manager:

    https://sourceforge.net/patch/?group_id=5470

Fred Drake will keep the ball rolling once you get it started.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at mojam.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/