[Python-Dev] Set options

[Moshe Zadka]

On Tue, 21 Mar 2000, Skip Montanaro wrote:

>     BAW> It would seem to me that distutils is a better way to go for
>     BAW> kjbuckets.  The core already has basic sets (via dictionaries).
>     BAW> We're pretty much just quibbling about efficiency, API, and syntax,
>     BAW> aren't we?
> 
> If new syntax is in the offing as some have proposed,

FWIW, I'm against new syntax. The core-language has changed quite a lot
between 1.5.2 and 1.6 --

* strings have grown methods
* there are unicode strings
* "in" operator overloadable

The second change even includes a syntax change (u"some string") whose
variants I'm still not familiar enough to comment on (ru"some\string"?
ur"some\string"? Both legal?). I feel too many changes destabilize the
language (this might seem a bit extreme, considering I pushed towards one
of the changes), and we should try to improve on things other then the
core -- one of these is a more hierarchical standard library, and a
standard distribution mechanism, to rival CPAN -- then anyone could 

import data.sets.kjbuckets

With only a trivial 

>>> import dist
>>> dist.install("data.sets.kjbuckets")

> why not go for a more efficient implementation at the same time? 

Because Python dicts are "pretty efficient", and it is not a trivial
question to check optimiality in this area: tests can be rigged to prove
almost anything with the right test-cases, and there's no promise we'll
choose the "right ones".

--
Moshe Zadka <mzadka@geocities.com>. 
http://www.oreilly.com/news/prescod_0300.html
http://www.linux.org.il -- we put the penguin in .com