[Python-Dev] Why are contexts also managers? (was r45544 - peps/trunk/pep-0343.txt)

[Nick Coghlan]

Greg Ewing wrote:
> Nick Coghlan wrote:
> 
>> During implementation, the meanings of "context" and "context manager" were 
>> swapped from the meanings in the approved PEP, leading to the current 
>> situation where decimal.Context is actually not, in fact, a context.
> 
> That's rather disappointing. I *liked* the way that
> decimal.Context was a context. Was there a conscious
> choice to swap the terms, or did it happen by accident?

That's what I'm currently trying to find out - whether or not this was a 
deliberate decision made at PyCon. Conference sprints are great for getting 
things done, but they do occasionally lead to decisions getting made without 
being properly recorded :)

The terminology in the current docs is more natural in some ways than what the 
PEP settled on (mainly due to the __context__ method), so I'm wondering if the 
downside that lead us to pick the slightly more awkward terminology may have 
been forgotten at the time of implementation.

Unfortunately this kind of discussion can take days via email*, even though it 
would probably only take ten minutes or so in person - not getting any 
immediate feedback when your point of view isn't being understood really slows 
things down.

I'm just glad AMK noticed the discrepancy - I completely missed it when I read 
the contextlib docs (I suspect my brain was being 'helpful' and automatically 
filled in what I expected to see rather than what was actually there).

Cheers,
Nick.

* s/can take/already has taken/ ;)

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia
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