I'm building a Python language wrapper to an network protocol which traditionally uses camelCase function names. I'm trying to make the new code pep-8 compliant, which means function names should be written this_way() instead of thisWay(). I've got a couple of choices open to me.
I could convert all the protocol names to pep-8 style mechanically. This is not as much work as it seems; the lowest-level Python code is already machine generated from a tabular description of the protocol. It's about one more line of code to convert getLibraries() to get_libraries(). This will leave the result the cleanest from the Python point of view. It'll also make the Python binding look a little different from the C++, Java, Perl, etc, bindings. Or, I could draw a line in the sand and say, "If it's a protocol primitive, it stays as written. Otherwise, it's pep-8". That's a little uglier because it's not always obvious to the user exactly which names are protocol primitives and which are higher-level operations. I figure either way, somebody's going to complain that I did it wrong :-) I realize there's no single correct answer here. I'm seeking input from people who have faced this question before. Which way did you go? In retrospect, was it the right decision? -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
