[Python-Dev] bpo-34595: How to format a type name?

[Larry Hastings]

On 09/13/2018 07:01 AM, Eric V. Smith wrote:
> On 9/12/2018 8:33 PM, Victor Stinner wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> For the type name, sometimes, we only get a type (not an instance),
>> and we want to format its FQN. IMHO we need to provide ways to format
>> the FQN of a type for *types* and for *instances*. Here is my
>> proposal:
>>
>> * Add !t conversion to format string
>
> I'm strongly opposed to this. This !t conversion would not be widely 
> applicable enough to be generally useful, and would need to be exposed 
> in the f-string and str.format() documentation, even though 99% of 
> programmers would never need or see it.


I discussed this with Eric in-person this morning at the core dev 
sprints.  Eric's understanding is that this is motivated by the fact 
that Py_TYPE() returns a borrowed reference, and by switching to this !t 
conversion we could avoid using Py_TYPE() when formatting error 
messages.  My quick thoughts on this:

  * If Py_TYPE() is a bad API, then it's a bad API and should be
    replaced.  We should have a new version of Py_TYPE() that returns a
    strong reference.
  * If we're talking about formatting error messages, we're formatting
    an exception, which means we're already no longer in
    performance-sensitive code.  So we should use the new API that
    returns a strong reference.  The negligible speed hit of taking the
    extra reference will be irrelevant.


Cheers,


//arry/
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