[Python-Dev] Proposal to revert r54204 (splitext change)

[Michael Foord]

Phillip J. Eby wrote:
> At 08:30 AM 3/15/2007 +1100, Delaney, Timothy (Tim) wrote:
>   
>> Phillip J. Eby wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> In addition to being made in the face of controversy and opposition,
>>> this
>>> change is an alteration to *documented and tested* behavior and thus
>>> cannot reasonably be considered a mere bug fix.
>>>       
>> FWIW, I support Phillip on this. There can be no question that the old 
>> behaviour was expected.
>>
>> IMO this is just gratuitous breakage. The only fix that shold be made is 
>> to the splitext documentation to match the docstring.
>>
>> A change to the documented behaviour should require a __future__ import 
>> for at least one version. That's even assuming that the change is 
>> desireable (I don't believe so). We have multiple anecdotes of actual, 
>> existing code that *will* break with this change. So far I haven't seen 
>> any actual code posted that is currently broken by the existing behaviour.
>>     
>
> FWIW, I think that, were we writing splitext() *now*, we should go with the 
> proposed behavior.  It's reasonable and justifiable even on Windows (even 
> though Windows Explorer agrees with the current splitext() behavior.)
>
> But, that doesn't actually have any bearing on the current discussion, 
> since splitext()'s behavior is existing and documented.
>
> Certainly, there *is* code that's broken by the existing behavior -- 
> otherwise the patch would never have been submitted in the first 
> place.  However, that doesn't automatically make it a Python bug, 
> especially if the existing behavior is documented and covered by regression 
> tests.
>
> I just want to clarify this point, because I don't wish to enter another 
> round of discussion about the merits of one behavior or the other: the 
> merits one way or the other are pretty much irrelevant to the policy issue 
> at hand.
>   

It looks to me like a clear bugfix (the fact that there were unit tests 
for the insane behaviour doesn't make it any less a bug). The current 
docstring that states that the first element may be empty hardly counts 
as it being a 'documented feature'.

At the least it is a grey area and not a policy reversal. The policy is 
that bugfixes can go in with warnings. So, as a debatable issue whether 
it is a bug (I think it is fairly clear), then it doesn't change or 
contravene policy.

Michael Foord


> _______________________________________________
> Python-Dev mailing list
> Python-Dev at python.org
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
> Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/fuzzyman%40voidspace.org.uk
>
>