python-dev summary, 2001-03-19 - 2001-04-12
Michael Hudson
mwh21 at cam.ac.uk
Thu Apr 12 06:44:10 EDT 2001
This is a summary of traffic on the python-dev mailing list between
Mar 29 and Apr 11 (inclusive) 2001. It is intended to inform the
wider Python community of ongoing developments. To comment, just
post to python-list at python.org or comp.lang.python in the usual
way. Give your posting a meaningful subject line, and if it's about a
PEP, include the PEP number (e.g. Subject: PEP 201 - Lockstep
iteration) All python-dev members are interested in seeing ideas
discussed by the community, so don't hesitate to take a stance on a
PEP if you have an opinion.
This is the fifth summary written by Michael Hudson.
Summaries are archived at:
<http://starship.python.net/crew/mwh/summaries/>
Posting distribution (with apologies to mbm)
Number of articles in summary: 166
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Not much traffic this fortnight. As ever, lots of bug-fixing for
2.1. If all goes to plan, I won't be able to say that in the next
summary!
* Assigning to __debug__ *
About 2 weeks ago, changes were checked in that made assignments to
the magic variable __debug__ SyntaxErrors. Martin von Loewis pointed
out that this would probably break code, and thus not be well
received:
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-March/013995.html>
There was general agreement, and it was decided that the error would
be reduced to a warning. Code to this effect has now been checked
in.
* Inverse string interpolation *
Peter Funk posted a proposal for using the "/" operator on strings as
a kind of dual to "%", i.e. be to "%" what "scanf" is to "printf" in
C:
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-April/014027.html>
There was muted approval for the idea, but less so for the spelling.
Of course "scanf" isn't much better unless you've programmed in C...
It's possible that this functionality will be somewhere in Python 2.2
(though builtin, module, infix operator or string method is still to
be decided, and it might be conditional on someone coming up with a
good name!).
* Line endings *
A recurring theme (with a pretty long period) cropped up again: that
of line endings in Python source code. The thread stars here:
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-April/014090.html>
At present, one cannot import a file with Unix line endings on the
Macintosh. While it would be relatively straightforward to bodge the
compiler into accepting any of \n, \r or \r\n as a line terminator,
this would not entirely solve the problem; for instance linecache.py
in the standard library would need to be fixed.
One option would be to implement a wrapper around file objects that
would make .readline() work with all line endings. However, this
would be entertainingly difficult to get right on all platforms...
You author hopes resolution is near, but admits to being slightly
confused about the details!
* Release schedule *
A release candidate for Python 2.1 should be released tomorrow (the
13th), and if all goes well, the final release will be on Monday (the
16th). Fingers crossed everyone!
Cheers,
M.
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