[Python-Dev] Import redesign [LONG]

[Fred L. Drake, Jr.]

Guido van Rossum writes:
 > variable.  Every piece of code that I've ever seen that uses sys.path
 > doesn't care if a directory named in sys.path doesn't exist -- it may
 > try to stat various files in it, which also don't exist, and as far as

  Not the case -- I know you've looked at some of my code in the KOE
that ensures only real directories are on the path, and each is only
there once (pathhack.py).  Given that sys.path is often too long and
includes duplicate entries in a large system (often one entry with and
one without a trailing / for a given directory), it useful to be able
to distinguish between things that should be interpretable as paths
and things that aren't.  It should not be hard to declare that
"cookies" or whatever have some special form, like "<cookie>".

 > (Unrelated remark: I should really try to release the set of modules
 > we've written here at CNRI to deal with zip files.  Unfortunately zip
 > files are hairy and so is our code.)

  It doesn't help that that code just plain stinks.  I maintain that
no one here understands the whole of it.


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	     <fdrake@acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives