Phillip J. Eby wrote: > At 08:30 AM 3/15/2007 +1100, Delaney, Timothy (Tim) wrote: > >> Phillip J. Eby wrote: >> >> >>> In addition to being made in the face of controversy and opposition, >>> this >>> change is an alteration to *documented and tested* behavior and thus >>> cannot reasonably be considered a mere bug fix. >>> >> FWIW, I support Phillip on this. There can be no question that the old >> behaviour was expected. >> >> IMO this is just gratuitous breakage. The only fix that shold be made is >> to the splitext documentation to match the docstring. >> >> A change to the documented behaviour should require a __future__ import >> for at least one version. That's even assuming that the change is >> desireable (I don't believe so). We have multiple anecdotes of actual, >> existing code that *will* break with this change. So far I haven't seen >> any actual code posted that is currently broken by the existing behaviour. >> > > FWIW, I think that, were we writing splitext() *now*, we should go with the > proposed behavior. It's reasonable and justifiable even on Windows (even > though Windows Explorer agrees with the current splitext() behavior.) > > But, that doesn't actually have any bearing on the current discussion, > since splitext()'s behavior is existing and documented. > > Certainly, there *is* code that's broken by the existing behavior -- > otherwise the patch would never have been submitted in the first > place. However, that doesn't automatically make it a Python bug, > especially if the existing behavior is documented and covered by regression > tests. > > I just want to clarify this point, because I don't wish to enter another > round of discussion about the merits of one behavior or the other: the > merits one way or the other are pretty much irrelevant to the policy issue > at hand. >
It looks to me like a clear bugfix (the fact that there were unit tests for the insane behaviour doesn't make it any less a bug). The current docstring that states that the first element may be empty hardly counts as it being a 'documented feature'. At the least it is a grey area and not a policy reversal. The policy is that bugfixes can go in with warnings. So, as a debatable issue whether it is a bug (I think it is fairly clear), then it doesn't change or contravene policy. Michael Foord > _______________________________________________ > Python-Dev mailing list > Python-Dev@python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev > Unsubscribe: > http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/fuzzyman%40voidspace.org.uk > > _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
