[Python-Dev] breaking list.append()

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> 
> Greg Stein <gstein@lyra.org> wrote:
> > On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> > > Greg Stein wrote:
> > > > Note that Guido posted a note to c.l.py on Monday. I believe that meets
> > > > your notification criteria.
> > >
> > > ahem.  do you seriously believe that everyone in the
> > > Python universe reads comp.lang.python?
> > >
> > > afaik, most Python programmers don't.
> >
> > Now you're simply taking my comments out of context. Not a proper thing to
> > do. Ken said that he wanted notification along certain guidelines. I said
> > that I believed Guido's post did just that. Period.
> 
> my point was that most Python programmers won't
> see that notification.  when these people download
> 1.6 final and find that all theirs apps just broke, they
> probably won't be happy with a pointer to dejanews.

Dito. Anyone remember the str(2L) == '2' change, BTW ?
That one will cost lots of money in case someone implemented
an eShop using the common str(2L)[:-1] idiom...

There will need to be a big warning sign somewhere that
people see *before* finding the download link. (IMHO, anyways.)

> > And which is that? Care to help out? Maybe just a little bit?
> 
> this rather common pydiom:
> 
>     append = list.append
>     for x in something:
>         append(...)
> 
> it's used a lot where performance matters.

Same here. checkappend.py doesn't find these (a great tool BTW,
thanks Tim; I noticed that it leaks memory badly though).
 
> > Or do you just want to talk about how bad this change is? :-(
> 
> yes, I think it's bad.  I've been using Python since 1.2,
> and no other change has had the same consequences
> (wrt. time/money required to fix it)
> 
> call me a crappy programmer if you want, but I'm sure
> there are others out there who are nearly as bad.  and
> lots of them won't be aware of this change until some-
> one upgrades the python interpreter on their server.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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