[Python-3000] PEP 3108: Standard Library Reorganization

[Josiah Carlson]

"Brett Cannon" <brett at python.org> wrote:
> * fileinput
>     + Basic functionality handled by ``itertools.chain``.
>     + Using ``enumerate`` (for the line number in the file),
>       ``itertools.repeat`` (for returning the filename with each
>       line), and ``zip`` (for connecting the ``enumerate`` object and
>       ``itertools.repeat`` object)  provides 95% of other unique
>       abilities of fileinput.

I agree with Giovanni on the above.

> * telnetlib
>     + Telnet is not used very much anymore.
>         - Telnet is unsafe.
>         - Most people use SSH instead.

I don't know how common telnet lib use is currently, but I have found it
useful in writing plaintext line-based clients (like SMTP, POP, HTTP,
IMAP, etc.), before moving on to writing async* derived clients.

> * base64/quopri/uu
>     + Support exists in the codecs module.
>     + If removed (along with binhex), also remove binascii.
>         - C implementation of base64, binhex, and uu modules.

The binascii module has become a catch all module for various plaintext
<-> binary conversions.  I'm not sure if using .encode()/.decode() are
necessarily desireable, especially in the case of certain binascii
conversions that involve long/int <-> binary (that didn't make it into
Python 2.5).

> * asynchat/asyncore
>     + Third-party libraries provide better solutions.
>         - twisted [#twisted]_
>     + Deprecation previously supported [#py-dev-summary-2004-11-01]_

There is quite a bit of user code that depends on asynchat/asyncore
modules.  While there are many people who end up using twisted, forcing
all asynchronous socket users to "drink the twisted kool-aid" would set
a bad precident for any commonly used stdlib Python library with a more
fully-featured 3rd party module.


> * stat
>     + ``os.stat`` now returns a tuple with attributes.

The stat module also offers useful functions like stat.IS_DIR() for
determining if an object is a directory.

> * thread
>     + People should use 'threading' instead.
>         - Rename 'thread' to _thread.
>         - Deprecate dummy_thread.
>             * Rename to _mockthread.
>             * Change of name better reflects modules purpose.
>     + Guido has previously supported the deprecation
>       [#thread-deprecation]_.

Sounds good.  Can we get this particular change into the 2.x series? 
I've seen too much code that mixes and matches threading and thread use.


> * SocketServer
>     socketserver

SocketServer and its derivatives (*HTTPServer) are tricky (I've been
seeing them used quite a bit)...

> * Servers
>     + BaseHTTPServer
>     + CGIHTTPServer
>     + DocXMLRPCServer
>     + SimpleHTTPServer
>     + SimpleXMLRPCServer
>     + SocketServer

Would it be a reasonable semantic to say that 'no top level modules or
packages can violate PEP 8 module/package naming guidelines', but
sub-modules or packages may use CamelCase by historical precident or
when doing so would make understanding the purpose of the module/package
easier?


 - Josiah