New submission from R. David Murray: A 'message' part is not, in fact, a multipart in RFC terms. (Only 'multipart' messages are multiparts.) The email package models 'message' parts by making them single-element "multipart" messages, with the single element being a Message object representing the 'message' part's payload.
This is very useful; however, the fact that this is done should be documented in at least the is_multipart and walk methods. As motivation for documenting this, consider a program that is looking for "the first part of type X" in a Message. If an attached 'message' object has such a part, it would be discovered by a naive algorithm that uses 'walk', even though it is *inside* an attachment instead of part of the main message. As for is_multipart, a naive reader of the documentation might expect that is_multipart would be true if and only if get_content_maintype == 'multipart', when this is in fact not true. (I made these mistakes myself while implementing get_body and iter_parts in the new API additions.) ---------- components: email messages: 196292 nosy: barry, r.david.murray priority: normal severity: normal stage: needs patch status: open title: is_multipart and walk should document their treatment of 'message' parts. versions: Python 2.7, Python 3.3, Python 3.4 _______________________________________ Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org> <http://bugs.python.org/issue18854> _______________________________________ _______________________________________________ Python-bugs-list mailing list Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-bugs-list/archive%40mail-archive.com
