[Python-3000] PEP: Cleaning out sys and the "interpreter" module

[Guido van Rossum]

On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 3:04 PM, Benjamin Peterson
<musiccomposition at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 4:45 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> > -0.5 from me. For half of the names that the PEP proposes to move most
> > users wouldn't be able to guess in which module to find them.

> If they're in *one* (maybe two; we'll see.) other module, it'd be hard to
> guess where they are? At the top of the sys docs, we'll put "sys: Generic
> Python interpreter services. For CPython specific tools, see the cpython
> module" I don't see why people have to be able to "guess" where a given
> object is. (It should be reasonably placed, of course.)

Yes, it will be hard, because most CPython users have no idea what
other Python implementations can or cannot do.

E.g. i was surprised to learn that Jython doesn't support a recursion
limit, or that frame objects are not universal (in fact I think *you*
are mistaken there).

OTOH I would guess that "executable" may not be meaningful in Jython,
as you'd have to invoke the JVM first. Other examples: I'm not at all
sure that all Python implementations should be expected to support
tracing and profiling. And I don't get why builtin_module_names can't
be universal.

Enough examples; I hope my point is clear.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)