[Python-Dev] Free threading (and tcl upvar)

[Guido van Rossum]

> I recall you reporting that.  It *would* be nice to have cross-platform
> pipes and exec, though i understand maintaining such non-portable code is
> too high a price to pay.  I bet we went over this then, but i can't help
> but wonder whether an approach like tkinter, stealing the tcl code, would
> be a manageable approach?  Mostly idle speculation, since i wouldn't have
> the time nor expertise to implement such a thing myself.

Tcl is a glue language that encourages you to glue external processes
together.  This is much less emphasized in Python, so I doubt that it
will be as useful.  I don't think it's worth the maintenance
nightmare.  Copying the Tcl code doesn't mean we have no maintenance
-- the Tcl code undoubtedly uses lots of Tcl runtime convenience
routines, which we would have to adapt to the Python runtime
environment.

> 'upvar' *is* sick.

That's why we have sys._getframe(). ;-)

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