[Types-sig] Re: [Doc-SIG] Sorry!

Tim Peters tim_one@email.msn.com
Fri, 17 Dec 1999 03:59:36 -0500


[Edward Welbourne]
> ...
> (Tim: the type Boolean is a (useful) synonym for PyObject.

I agree.  I'm trying to avoid the mess C and then C++ got into by refusing
to define a bool type for so many years (and so 10,000 development groups
typedef'ed it in 20,000 different ways, many pairwise incompatable -- the
runtime doesn't have much use for a distinct bool type, but it says
something vital in signatures for *people*).

> It probably includes some added semantics about how you should be
> trying to use it.)

Python's runtime rules have no restrictions on what a true/false object may
be, or how one may be manipulated, and I don't want to impose any that Guido
didn't see fit to impose from the start (I think we should be trying to
provide notation for Python's actual types, not invent brand new types -- so
"synonym" is what I want!).  I just want that specific type name *there* so
people don't run off defining their own in mutually incompatible ways.

someday-i-*might*-want-to-run-somebody-else's-code<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim