On Jun 25, 10:11 pm, Stefan Behnel <stefan...@behnel.de> wrote: > Carl Banks wrote: > >> Why isn't et.parse the only way to do this? Why have XML or fromstring > >> at all? > > > Because Fredrick Lundh wanted it that way. Unlike most Python > > libraries ElementTree is under the control of one person, which means > > it was not designed or vetted by the community, which means it would > > tend to have some interface quirks. > > Just for the record: Fredrik doesn't actually consider it a design "quirk".
Well of course he wouldn't--it's his library. > He argues that it's designed for different use cases. While parse() parses > a file, which normally contains a complete document (represented in ET as > an ElementTree object), fromstring() and especially the 'literal wrapper' > XML() are made for parsing strings, which (most?) often only contain XML > fragments. With a fragment, you normally want to continue doing things like > inserting it into another tree, so you need the top-level element in almost > all cases. Whatever, like I said I am not going to nit-pick over small things, when all the big things are done right. Carl Banks -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
