On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 3:23 PM, Larry Hastings <la...@hastings.org> wrote: > I disagree with the description "ill-defined". I would be very surprised > indeed if either you or Benjamin genuinely didn't understand exactly what > "is_implemented" represents. If you're suggesting that the documentation is > inadequate we can certainly address that. > > Perhaps you meant "ill-concieved"?
No, I mean ill-defined. The criteria for when a particular platform should flip that bit for an arbitrary parameter is highly unclear, as whether or not a particular parameter is "implemented" or not depends on the operation and the parameter. Let's take the "buffering" parameter to the open() builtin. It has three interesting settings: - unbuffered - line buffered - fixed size buffering What counts as "implemented" in that case? Supporting all 3? At least 2? Any 1 of them? If there's a maximum (or minimum) buffer size, does that still count as implemented? To know what "is_implemented" means for any given parameter, it's going to have to be documented *for that parameter*. In that case, better to define an interface specific mechanism that lets people ask the questions they want to ask. It's not appropriate to lump it into a general purpose introspection facility (certainly not one that hasn't even been added yet). Cheers, Nick. -- Nick Coghlan | ncogh...@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia _______________________________________________ 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
