[Python-Dev] r87389 - in python/branches/py3k: Doc/library/unittest.rst Lib/unittest/case.py Misc/NEWS

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Sun, 19 Dec 2010 18:54:55 -0500
Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
> On 12/19/2010 1:41 PM, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 5:13 AM, Antoine Pitrou<solipsis at pitrou.net>  wrote:
> 
> >> This could be nicely resolved by renaming the arguments "a" and "b",
> >> and having the diff display "a, b". It's quite natural (both the diff
> >> ordering and the arguments ordering), and they are consistent with each
> >> other.
> >
> > So 'a' stands for 'after' and 'b' for 'before', right? :-)
> 
> difflib uses 'a' and 'b' for before and after (orig,new in svn terms, 
> with edits/diffs from a to b) respectively. Not really great.

For a non-native English speaker, 'a' and 'b' don't evoke 'after' and
'before' but simply the first two letters of the latin alphabet, and
their ordering is therefore obvious with respect to function arguments.

By the way, hg uses a/b as well, and so does git apparently, so
Python's difflib is not exotic in that regard:

$ hg diff
diff -r 56867877575b README
--- a/README    Fri Dec 17 21:43:27 2010 +0100
+++ b/README    Mon Dec 20 01:42:57 2010 +0100
@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
+some change
 This is Python version 3.2 beta 1
 =================================
 

Regards

Antoine.