On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 6:42 AM Mark Shannon <m...@hotpy.org> wrote:
>
> > Let us start from some anecdotal evidence: isinstance() is one of the
> most called functions in large scale Python code-bases (by static call
> count). In particular, when analyzing some multi-million line production
> code base, it was discovered that isinstance() is the second most called
> builtin function (after len()). Even taking into account builtin classes,
> it is still in the top ten. Most of such calls are followed by specific
> attribute access.
>
> Why use anecdotal evidence? I don't doubt the numbers, but it would be
> better to use the standard library, or the top N most popular packages
> from GitHub.
>
Agreed. This anecdote felt off to me and made for a bad introductory
feeling. I know enough of who is involved to read it as likely "within the
internal Dropbox code base we found isinstance() to be the second most
called built-in by static call counts". It'd be better worded as such
instead of left opaque if you are going to use this example at all. [but
read on below, i'm not sure the anecdotal evidence is even relevant to
state]
Also if using this, please include text explaining what "static call count
means". Was that "number of grep 'isinstance[(]' matches in all .py files
which we reasonably assume are calls"? Or was that "measuring a running
application and counting cumulative calls of every built-in for the
lifetime of the large application"? Include a footnote of if you have you
removed all use of six and py2->py3-isms? Both six and manual py2->3
porting often wound up adding isinstance in places where they'll rightfully
be refactored out when cleaning up the py2 dead code legacy becomes anyones
priority.
A very rough grep of our much larger Python codebase within Google shows
isinstance *call site counts* to likely be lower than int or len and
similar to print. With a notable percentage of isinstance usage clearly
related to py2 -> py3 compatibility, suggesting many can now go away. I'm
not going to spend much time looking further as I don't think actual
numbers matter: *Confirmed, isinstance gets used a lot.* We can simply
state that as a truth and move on without needing a lot of justification.
>
> > There are two possible conclusions that can be drawn from this
> information:
> >
> > Handling of heterogeneous data (i.e. situations where a variable can
> take values of multiple types) is common in real world code.
> > Python doesn't have expressive ways of destructuring object data
> (i.e. separating the content of an object into multiple variables).
>
> I don't see how the second conclusion can be drawn.
> How does the prevalence of `isinstance()` suggest that Python doesn't
> have expressive ways of destructuring object data?
...
> >
> > We believe this will improve both readability and reliability of
> relevant code. To illustrate the readability improvement, let us consider
> an actual example from the Python standard library:
> >
> > def is_tuple(node):
> > if isinstance(node, Node) and node.children == [LParen(), RParen()]:
> > return True
> > return (isinstance(node, Node)
> > and len(node.children) == 3
> > and isinstance(node.children[0], Leaf)
> > and isinstance(node.children[1], Node)
> > and isinstance(node.children[2], Leaf)
> > and node.children[0].value == "("
> > and node.children[2].value == ")")
> >
>
> Just one example?
> The PEP needs to show that this sort of pattern is widespread.
>
Agreed. I don't find application code following this pattern to be
common. Yes it exists, but I would not expect to encounter it frequently
if I were doing random people's Python code reviews.
The supplied "stdlib" code example is lib2to3.fixer_util.is_tuple. Using
that as an example of code "in the standard library" is *technically*
correct. But lib2to3 is an undocumented deprecated library that we have
slated for removal. That makes it a bit weak to cite.
Better practical examples don't have to be within the stdlib.
Randomly perusing some projects I know that I expect to have such
constructs, here's a possible example:
https://github.com/PyCQA/pylint/blob/master/pylint/checkers/logging.py#L231.
There are also code patterns in pytype such as
https://github.com/google/pytype/blob/master/pytype/vm.py#L480 and
https://github.com/google/pytype/blob/master/pytype/vm.py#L1088 that might
make sense.
Though I realize you were probably in search of a simple one for the PEP in
order to write a before and after example.
-gps
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