One class per file?

[George Boutsioukis]

On Mon, 29 Sep 2008 06:12:35 -0700, HCB wrote:

> Hello:
> 
> The book "Code Complete" recommends that you put only one class in a
> source file, which seems a bit extreme for me. It seems that many
> classes are small, so that putting several of them in a file seems
> reasonable. I noticed that the decimal.py module in the standard library
> has several classes, all of which of course revolve around the "decimal"
> topic. Perhaps a better rule of thumb is "one idea per file." I checked
> the Python style guide and there seems to be no mention of this topic. I
> know this is an elementary question, but what is the Python way of doing
> this?
> 
> Thanks for your time.
> HCB

That sounds terrible! Imagine having a million source files to edit, 
rename, create, delete each time you make a change. Sure, every Java fan 
can give you a million reasons why the universe will collapse otherwise, 
but this is totally impractical in python. Python's module organization 
and namespaces are more than enough if used reasonably.