[Python-Dev] Heads up: socket.connect() breakage ahead

[Guido van Rossum]

> I think this one already caused too much pain:  it appears virtually
> everyone uses the two-argument form routinely, and the reason for getting
> rid of that seems pretty weak.  As Tres Seaver just wrote on c.l.py,
> 
>     Constructing a spurious "address" object (which has no behavior, and
>     exists only to be torn apart inside the implementation) seems a
>     foolish consistency, beyond doubt.

No more foolish than passing a point as an (x, y) tuple instead of
separate x and y arguments.  There are good reasons for passing it as
a tuple, such as being able to store and recall it as a single entity.

> So offer to back off on this one, in return for making 1/2 yield 0.5 <wink>.

Unfortunately, I think I will have to.  And it will have to be
documented.  The problem is that I can't document it as connect(host,
port) -- there are Unix domain sockets that only take a single string
argument (a filename).  Also, sendto() takes a (host, port) tuple
only.  It has other arguments so that's the only form.

Maybe I'll have to document it as connect(address) with a backwards
compatible syntax connect(a, b) being equivalent to connect((a, b)).
At least that sets the record straight without breaking old code.

Still torn,

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