One problem is that API wrappers like this sometimes include extra functionality. When I ran across this example, I wondered whether the Python interface had been enhanced to work like this
# set these three flags rv = fcntl.fcntl(f, fcntl.F_SETFL, os.O_NDELAY) rv = fcntl.fcntl(f, fcntl.F_SETFL, os.O_APPEND) rv = fcntl.fcntl(f, fcntl.F_SETFL, os.O_NOATIME) Something like this might be nice, but after staring at it for another minute, I realized that the Python interface itself was standard, and that it was the example itself that was confusing me. (I've been programming Unix/POSIX for over 20 years, so perhaps I simply outsmarted myself, or am an idiot. Still, I found it confusing.) One of the many virtues of Python is that it's oriented towards learning/teaching. It seems like it would be useful in this case to have an example that shows best practice (as in Stevens/Rago and other similar texts), rather than one that will merely usually work on present systems. If it makes any difference, I'd be happy to send a patch. Is there any reason not to change this? Mike On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 6:36 PM, Guido van Rossum <gu...@python.org> wrote: > Well my Linux man page says that the only flags supported are > O_APPEND, O_ASYNC, O_DIRECT, O_NOATIME, and O_NONBLOCK; and all of > those are typically off -- so I'm not sure that it's a mistake or need > correcting. These APIs should only be used by people who know what > they're doing anyways; the examples are meant to briefly show the call > format. > > On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 1:31 PM, Mike Coleman <tutu...@gmail.com> wrote: >> In the doc page for the fcntl module, the example below is given. >> This seems like an error, or at least very misleading, as the normal >> usage is to get the flags (F_GETFL), set or unset the bits you want to >> change, then set the flags (F_SETFL). A reader might think that the >> example below merely sets O_NDELAY, but it also stomps all of the >> other bits to zero. >> >> If someone can confirm my thinking, this ought to be changed. >> >> import struct, fcntl, os >> >> f = open(...) >> rv = fcntl.fcntl(f, fcntl.F_SETFL, os.O_NDELAY) > > -- > --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/) > _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com