[Python-Dev] Criticism of execfile() removal in Python3

[Chris Barker]

On Sat, Jun 14, 2014 at 1:11 PM, Paul Sokolovsky <pmiscml at gmail.com> wrote:


> > > 1. It hampers interactive mode - instead of short and easy to type
> > > execfile("file.py") one needs to use exec(open("file.py").read()).

>
> > If the amount of typing is the problem, that's easy to solve:
> >
> > # do this once
> > def execfile(name):
> >     exec(open("file.py").read())
>

FWIW, when I started using python (15?) years ago -- the first thing I
looked for was a way to "just run a file", at the interactive prompt, like
I had in MATLAB. I found and used execfile().

However, it wasn't long before I discovered that excecfile() was really
kind of a pain, you've got namespaces, and all sorts of stuff that made it
often not work like I wanted, and was a pain to type. I stopped using it
all together

More recently, I discovered iPython and its "run" function -- very nice, it
does the obvious stuff for you the way you'd expect.

My conclusions:

1) runfile() is not really very usefull, it's fine to hve removed it.

2) the built-in interactive python interpreter is really pretty lame. If
you want a good interactive experience, you need something more anyway
(iPython, for instance) -- putting execfile() back is only one tiny
improvement that's not worth it.


So if this is about micropython -- I think it would serve the project very
well to have a micropython-specific interactive mode. iPython is fabulous,
but though I imagine too heavy weight. But perhaps you could borrow some
things from it -- like "run" , for example.

-Chris


-- 

Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
Oceanographer

Emergency Response Division
NOAA/NOS/OR&R            (206) 526-6959   voice
7600 Sand Point Way NE   (206) 526-6329   fax
Seattle, WA  98115       (206) 526-6317   main reception

Chris.Barker at noaa.gov
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/attachments/20140616/2e0d06e0/attachment.html>