[Python-ideas] User-defined literals

[Guido van Rossum]

On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 4:20 PM, Andrew Barnert <abarnert at yahoo.com> wrote:

> On Jun 4, 2015, at 14:05, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>
> OK, you can attribute that to lousy docs. The intention is that builtin
> types are immutable.
>
>
> I can go file bugs against those other implementations, but first, what's
> the rationale?
>
> The ABC PEP, the numbers PEP discussion, and the type/class unification
> tutorial all use the same reason: In CPython, different interpreters in the
> same memory space (as with mod_python) share the same built-in types. From
> the numbers discussion, it sounds like this was the only reason to reject
> the idea of just patching float.__bases__.
>
> But most other Python implementations don't have process-wide globals like
> that to worry about; patching int in one interpreter can't possibly affect
> any other interpreter.
>
> "Because CPython can't do it, nobody else should do it, to keep code
> portable" might be a good enough rationale for something this fundamental,
> but if that's not the one you're thinking of, I don't want to put those
> words in your mouth.
>

Why do you need a better rationale?

The builtins are shared between all modules in a way that other things
aren't. Nothing good can come from officially recognizing the ability to
monkey-patch the builtin types -- it would just lead to paranoia amongst
library developers.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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