On 14/5/19 12:38 am, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
On Mon, May 13, 2019 at 12:31:08PM +0200, Anders Hovmöller wrote:
An optional "overwrite_if_exists=False" flag seems much nicer.
Aside from the argument name being too verbose, that violates the rule
of thumb "avoid constant bool flags" design principle.
(Note that this is a *rule of thumb*, not a hard law: there are times
that it can and should be violated; its also not a well-known principle
and so lots of APIs violate it even when they shouldn't.)
Interestingly, reviewing https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html, I
see *many* optional arguments with a Boolean default value.
In fact, both os.link and os.symlink have one.
os.link(src, dst, *, src_dir_fd=None, dst_dir_fd=None, follow_symlinks=True)
os.symlink(src, dst, target_is_directory=False, *, dir_fd=None)
The title of the page https://docs.python.org/library/os.html is:
Miscellaneous operating system interfaces
It is interesting that a module which provides interfaces seems to so
blatantly disregard the "avoid constant bool flags" function interface
design principle. Given that they are interfaces, they could have been
written in a more pythonesque way.
If the POSIX utility ln were to be implemented, there are a few binary
options:
1. Hard or soft link
2. Overwrite or raise an error
3. Follow symlinks or link to them
If there were a different function for each, that would be a total of 8
functions, with ugly names like "hardlink_overwrite_follow_links" or
"softlink_non_overwrite_link_to_links".
It seems far more practicable to have only two functions with sensible
boolean defaults, with the split being based on the underlying os module
function, namely os.link and os.symlink.
--
Tom Hale
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