So I was reading the docs for the `threading` module and I stumbled upon this little note:
Note: In the Python 2.x series, this module contained camelCase names for some methods and functions. These are deprecated as of Python 3.10, but they are still supported for compatibility with Python 2.5 and lower. And it got me thinking. Given that there is some precedent, would it be feasible to make a concerted effort to add aliases across the board for all public-facing stdlib types and functions that don't follow pep8-recommended casing? I realize that large chunks of the stdlib predates pep8 and therefore use various non-uniform conventions. For example, the logging module is fully camelCased, and many core types like `str` and `list` don't use PascalCase as pep8 recommends. The `collections` module is a veritable mosaic of casing conventions, with some types like `deque` and `namedtuple` being fully lowercased while others like `Counter` and `ChainMap` are PascalCased. My motivation for this twofold: 1) I'll confess that this has just always been a wart that has bothered me way more than it has any right to. I just *hate* it. Somewhere deep inside my lizard-brain it makes me unhappy to have disparate naming conventions in my code. I realize this isn't a good reason in and of itself but I wonder if this might not be the case for others as well. While I've come to accept it because that's just how it is, maybe it doesn't have to be this way? 2) It's always been an extra thing to explain when teaching python to someone. I always try to cover pep8 very early to discourage people I'm training from internalizing bad habits, and it means you have to explain that the very standard library itself contains style violations that would get flagged in most modern code reviews, and that they just have to keep in mind that despite the fact that the core language does it, they should not. So the scope of my suggestion is as follows: - lowercase types become PascalCase (e.g., `str` -> `Str`, `collections.defaultdict` -> `collections.DefaultDict`) - lowercase attributes/functions/methods become snake_case (no changes for names that only contain a single word, so `str.lower()` would be unaffected, but `str.removeprefix()` would get the alias `str.remove_prefix()`) - pep8 and the python docs are updated to state that the pep8-compliant forms of stdlib names should be strongly preferred over the legacy names, and that IDEs and linters should include (configurable?) weak warnings to discourage the use of legacy-cased stdlib names - `help()` would be special-cased for builtin types to no longer display any current non-pep8-compliant names, and the python docs would also no longer show them, instead only making a note at the top of the page as with the `threading` module. Given the horrors of the python 2.7 schism I don't think there's any rush to officially deprecate or remove the current non-pep8 names at all. I think that's the sort of thing that can happily and fully be kicked down the road. If we add aliases and they see widespread adoption to the point where the non-pep8 forms are barely ever even seen out in the wild then maybe in 10 or 20 years time when the steering council is deliberating on a new major python version they can consider rolling the removal of legacy badly-cased names into it. And if not then no big deal. So yeah, thoughts?
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