On May 27, 3:35 am, Ben Finney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Paul McGuire <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > At this point, I realized that I was taking things too far > > off-topic, so I decided to start a new thread. > > So, uh, what's the purpose of this thread? Did you have a specific > point to start off with, or a question to ask? > > -- > \ "It seems intuitively obvious to me, which means that it might | > `\ be wrong." -- Chris Torek | > _o__) | > Ben Finney
(Nice sig quote, by the way.) Mostly, I started this thread so any discussion of lower_case_with_underscores (l_c_w_u) vs. mixedCase naming styles would not (further) clutter up Steve Howell's thread. To recap: - I was surprised at the comments to convert Steve's example to l_c_w_u, as the last time I read PEP-8, it had the more liberal "use whichever you prefer, just be consistent" wording. - I posted one comment that I thought l_c_w_u looks old-fashioned, and was an odd choice in the face of mixedCase, which has been adopted as de facto practice in recent languages. - I also mused on the implications for l_c_w_u in the face of Py3K's recent acceptance of non-ASCII identifiers, and added as a related point my own personal experience with typing '_' on a non-US keyboard layout. - At this point, I tracked down the python-dev archive of the discussion thread that led to the stricter version of PEP-8, and I can see that this is a windmill (like the choice of '@' sign for decorators) that is not worth tilting at. It is a bit reassuring that I am not the only one who turns a blind eye to this part of the PEP, that l_c_w_u bothers others as well. But as to the further purpose for this thread, I think there is little to none. We will continue to see std lib code written using l_c_w_u. Ordinarily, this would little concern me, since I go to read std lib code about once/year. But it does mean that additions to the external API to the std lib will contain method calls such as get_files, send_message, delete_record, etc. I think this just promotes a perception of Python as "so last century." It would also seem we will continue to see 3rd party developers use whatever their personal taste and/or project coding standards dictate. So for these users, this part of the PEP is "not really a code, its more of a guideline."* -- Paul *same joke was in Ghostbusters and Pirates of the Caribbean, Pt.1 -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
