[Python-Dev] End of the line

[Tim Peters]

[Tim, on the cheating PerlIO API]

[Brian Lloyd]
> Hmm - speed bonuses not withstanding, an implementation of
> such a beast in the Python sources would've helped a lot to
> reduce the ugly hairy gymnastics required to get Python going
> on Win CE, where (until very recently) there was no concept
> of most of the things you expect to find in stdio...

I don't think it would have helped you there.  If e.g. ftell is missing,
it's no easier to implement it yourself under the name "PerlIO_ftell" than
under the name "ftell" ...

Back before Larry Wall got it into in his head that Perl is a grand metaphor
for freedom and creativity (or whatever), he justifiably claimed that Perl's
great achievement was in taming Unix.  Which it did!  Perl essentially
defined yet a 537th variation of libc/shell/tool semantics, but in a way
that worked the same across its 536 Unix hosts.  The PerlIO API is a great
help with *that*:  if a platform is a little off kilter in its
implementation of one of these functions, Perl can use a corresponding
PerlIO wrapper to hide the shortcoming in a platform-specific file, and the
rest of Perl blissfully assumes everything works the same everywhere.

That's a good, cool idea.  Ironically, Perl does more to hide gratuitous
platform differences here than Python does!  But it's just a pile of names
if you've got no stdio to build on.

let's-model-PythonIO-on-the-win32-api<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim