[stdlib-sig] Proposal: new "interpreter" module

[Brett Cannon]

On Sat, Apr 5, 2008 at 6:13 PM, Benjamin Peterson
<musiccomposition at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 5, 2008 at 10:37 AM, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:
> >
> > On Sat, Apr 5, 2008 at 4:58 PM, Benjamin Peterson
> > <musiccomposition at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Here's an updated version:
> > >
> > >
> > >    - display_hook, stdout, stdin, and stderr
> > >    - flags and warn_options
> > >    - settrace, and setprofile
> > >    - traceback, excepthook
> > >    - etc...
> > >
> >
> > You still need to get rid of the "etc.". Beyond being explicit, it
> > makes it easier for people reviewing the PEP to see what they think
> > might be better placed in the new module.
>
> PEP: XXX
> Title: The interpreter module
> Version: $Revision$
> Last-Modified: $Date$
> Author: Benjamin Peterson
> Status: Draft
> Type: Standards Track
>  Content-Type: text/x-rst
> Created: 4-April-2008
> Python-Version: 3.0
>
>
> Abstract
> ========
>
> This PEP proposes a new low-level module for CPython-specific interpreter
> functions in order to clean out the sys module and separate general Python
>  functionality from implementation details.
>
>
> Rationale
> =========
>
> The sys module currently contains functions and data that can be put into
> two
> major groups:
>
> 1. Data and functions that are available in all Python implementations and
> deal
>     with the general running of a Python VM.
>
>    - argv
>    - byteorder
>    - builtin_module_names, path, and modules

builtin_module_names is an implementation detail and thus should be moved.

>    - subversion, copyright, hexversion, version, and version_info

Ditto for subversion.

>    - displayhook, __displayhook__
>     - excepthook, __excepthook__, exc_info, and exc_clear
>    - exec_prefix and prefix
>    - executable
>    - exit
>    - flags, py3kwarning, dont_write_bytecode, and warn_options

dont_write_bytecode might be better off in the new module, but then
bytecode is part of the stdlib. I guess it depends on how the other
interpreters view bytecode. They could easily just have it always set
to False.

>    - getfilesystemencoding
>    - get/setprofile
>     - get/settrace
>    - getwindowsversion
>    - maxint and maxunicode
>    - platform
>    - ps1 and ps2
>    - stdin, stderr, stdout, __stdin__, __stderr__, __stdout__
>    - tracebacklimit
>

Perhaps we should have sys.interpreter or sys.vm? That way e.g. Jython
no longer has to override sys.platform to specify that VM-specific
changes are in effect?

-Brett