On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 8:47 PM, Ben Finney <ben+pyt...@benfinney.id.au> wrote: > I would say that names without a single leading underscore are part of > the public API, whether documented or not.
I don't recall this ever being the standard library's policy. There are many modules using leading underscores as hints, and many others which don't. Other people consider the presence of a docstring on a non-underscored name significant, while still others refer to the out-of-line documentation as definitive. For modules, an __all__ attribute is generally agreed on as definitive, if present, but that's a fairly limited case. At this point, there isn't a single clear way to determine if something is public API. I doubt it will be likely to agree on a single definition now without engendering a lengthy discussion on whether names can be changed to reflect such a policy (where backward compatibility is sure to be lost). I'm sticking to the out-of-line documentation to determine what's public. -Fred -- Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake at acm.org> "A storm broke loose in my mind." --Albert Einstein _______________________________________________ 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
