case-sensitivity

[Alex Martelli]

Ron Adam wrote:
    ...
> I wonder how difficult it would be to write a program that searches
> the library and counts the number of instances like spelling with
> differing case are used?

You mean "used within the same namespace"?  Not too hard, since the
key test is nothing more than something like:

o

so basically it boils down to finding all namespaces of interest.

Easy for modules, easy for classes, NOT easy for class-instances
as you'd really have to create the instances to check for such
cases as, e.g.:

class Foo(object):
    def blab(self): return self.BLAB
    def __init__(self, BLAB): self.BLAB = BLAB

So here's a q&d check for such module-level conflicts I just
cobbled together (avoiding obsolete modules):

import sys, glob, os.path, sets

avoid = sets.Set('''
    FCNTL posixfile pre regsub statcache TERMIOS this tzparse xmllib
    '''.split())

for where in sys.path:
    modules = glob.glob(os.path.join(where, '*.py'))
    modnams = [os.path.basename(m)[:-3] for m in modules]
    for m in modnams:
        if m in avoid: continue
        try: modobj = __import__(m)
        except ImportError: continue
        dd = dir(modobj)
        lowdd = [ n.lower() for n in dd ]
        slowd = sets.Set(lowdd)
        if len(dd) != len(slowd):
            print '%s:'%m,
            n = 0
            for d in dd:
                if lowdd.count(d.lower()) != 1:
                    print d,
                    n += 1
            print

The hits in the top-level of the standard libraries are:

binhex: BinHex HexBin binhex hexbin
copy: Error error
popen2: Popen3 Popen4 popen3 popen4
pydoc: Doc doc
random: Random random
repr: Repr repr
sre_parse: SUBPATTERN SubPattern
sre: TEMPLATE template
tarfile: VERSION version
threading: _VERBOSE _Verbose
tokenize: COMMENT Comment NAME NUMBER Name Number STRING String string
xmlrpclib: Boolean boolean


there are more in lib-tk and Numeric, but not everybody will be
interested in those, I guess.


Alex