On Wed, 09 Feb 2011 10:37:11 +0000 Mark Shannon <ma...@dcs.gla.ac.uk> wrote: > > > > Why redundant? > > Because they are all attribute getter and setters. For example: > > PyUnicodeDecodeError_GetStart(exc, x) <=> > PyObject_GetAttr(exc, "start", x) > > This sort of redundancy seems sensible for list, tuple and such. > It just seems like bloat for classes like UnicodeDecodeError.
It's not exactly the same thing, still. PyObject_GetAttr() will do a full blown attribute access, while I guess (I didn't check) PyUnicodeDecodeError_GetStart() accesses the C struct member directly. Also, the latter gives you a Py_ssize_t object, which relieves you from having to do a conversion explicitly. I do agree that it doesn't seem widely used, according to Google Code Search :) > >> http://docs.python.org/py3k/c-api/exceptions.html#unicode-exception-objects > >> Should this be in the public API? > > > > While this question is valid, it *should* have been asked 8 years ago, when > > the functions were actually added. > > The functions may have been add to CPython 8 years ago, but they were > added to the API when they appeared in the docs, between 3.1 and 3.1.3. > > How is the API defined, if not by the documentation? > The header files do not specify what is API and what is implementation > specific. True. But if they were added to the documentation, it's certainly because they were *intended* to be part of the API from the start. (after all, core CPython code can just access the C struct fields directly rather than go through a function call) Take it as acknowledging that it has *always* been part of the intended API. These days, we try to follow a stricter naming convention: when we want an API to remain explicitly private, we often prefix it with an underscore. But that has not been the case in the past, I admit. > > Any changes in API are definitely forbidden before 3.2. > > If that is the case then the API, as defined by > http://docs.python.org/py3k/c-api/index.html > should be same for 3.2 as for 3.1, plus a few functions, > that are explicitly marked as "New in version 3.2". > > Unfortunately, that is not currently the case. How so? Can you give an example? Regards Antoine. _______________________________________________ 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
