[Python-Dev] IO implementation: in C and Python?

[Guido van Rossum]

On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 8:38 PM, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 19:41, Benjamin Peterson <benjamin at python.org>
> wrote:
>> As we prepare to merge the io-c branch, the question has come up [1]
>> about the original Python implementation. Should it just be deleted in
>> favor C version? The wish to maintain the two implementations together
>> has been raised on the basis that Python is easier to experiment on
>> and read (for other vm implementors).
>
> Probably not a surprise, but +1 from me for keeping the pure Python version
> around for the benefit of other VMs as well as a reference implementation.

You have been practice channeling me again, haven't you? I like the
idea of having two (closely matching) implementations very much. In
2.x we did this on an ad-hoc basis, e.g. [c]StringIO, pickle/cPickle,
heapq/_heapq. In 3.0 we've moved towards standardizing the approach --
the foo.py file first defines everything and then tries to import *
from _foo on top of that.

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