[Python-Dev] how about adding ping's uuid module to the standard lib ?

[Thomas Heller]

Paul Moore wrote:
> On 3/7/06, Phillip J. Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:
>> At 06:29 AM 3/7/2006 +0100, Fredrik Lundh wrote:
>>> see subject and http://python.org/sf/1368955
>>>
>>> comments ?
>> would be nice if you could just call UUID() to create a generic UUID in a
>> platform-appropriate way.  PEAK's uuid module does this such that if
>> win32all is present, you get a Windows GUID, or if you have a FreeBSD 5+ or
>> NetBSD 2+ kernel you use the local platform uuidgen API.  See e.g.:
> 
> Given that ctypes is going to be in Python 2.5, it might be reasonable
> to use it to access platform-specific APIs like this. It certainly
> makes some sense for Windows, where running an external process is
> slow, and the existence of suitable external utilities (and the format
> of their output!) is unreliable... (I haven't looked at the code, so I
> don't know if this applies to Ping's use of ipconfig).
> 

IMO that is a perfect use-case for ctypes - access 2 or 3 platform-specific
api functions.  Too bad that ctypes whill be an optional module, so I'm
not sure if it could be used in the Python library itself.

Thomas