[Python-Dev] Direction of PyChecker

Guido van Rossum guido@python.org
Fri, 10 Aug 2001 15:45:19 -0400


> As I said before, I think that the modules/classes
> in the standard library should have them.

You can help by submitting some patches (one module at a time please :-).

> And docstrings are definitely
> doc, not code.

Agreed, but I don;'t understand why you said this.

> > There are also complaints about attribute used by an
> > abstract base class but only defined in the subclass.
> 
> This is true.  While python doesn't require setting, I think this feature
> can be dangerous.  It seems better to init the attr to None. 

Agreed.  The initialization to None can have a comment explaining what
the subclass should do.

Ditto for methods: in an abstract base class, the methods should be
defined (so the signature is known) but raise NotImplementedError.

> In urllib2, there are 6 warnings about 2 different attributes. 

How come PyChecker didn't find the other typo there?

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