"Guido van Rossum" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] | But then I thought, what if we renamed the __builtin__ module instead | to builtins, and left __builtins__ alone? | | In Python 0.1, __builtin__ *was* called builtin, and I think the | reason for renaming it wasn't particularly well thought-out; as a | *module*, I'm not sure that it really needs to have such a special | name (I don't think it's more special than sys, anyway). There's no | motivation in the checkin comment that renamed it (r3527).
+1 for plain 'builtins' or whatever for the name of the module. I believe it would have been less confusing to me learning Python, (and still today ;-) if it had been this way 10 years ago. The rationale for special __xxx__ names (identifiers) is to avoid namespace clashes. So they are only needed for namespace names bound to objects, including string objects representing definition names. Since '__builtin__' is merely a string object bound to '__name__' (I presume) in the module itself and to '__builtins__' in all others, a string that did not imitate a reserved identifier would be clearer, at least to me. Similarly, by the way, the main module might justifiably be '__name__'ed 'main' rather than '__main__' since whatever string is bound to '__name__' is *not* in the module namespace. "if __name__ == 'main' " is a bit easier to type and to me a bit clearer. The only problem would be if someone put the incantation into a non-main module named 'main.py', but the same is true today of '__main__.py'. And I would consider either a buggy practice. These are the only two builtin strings I can think of that have the form of special names, even though they are not actually identifiers. If so, they are the only two 'special names' that *must* be quoted as strings, while binding names (identifiers) usually are not. If both were changed, then 'special names' would simply be 'internal namespace names used by the implementation'. I think this would make it easier for beginners to keep separate the notions of 'identifier' and 'string'. Terry Jan Reedy _______________________________________________ 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
