[Python-Dev] PEP 259: Omit printing newline after newline

[Chris Gonnerman]

I have to say, I'm strongly against this PEP... does anyone else agree with
me?

----- Original Message -----
From: "M.-A. Lemburg" <mal at lemburg.com>
Subject: Re: [Python-Dev] PEP 259: Omit printing newline after newline


> Guido van Rossum wrote:
> >
> > Please comment on the following.  This came up a while ago in
> > python-dev and I decided to follow through.  I'm making this a PEP
> > because of the risk of breaking code (which everybody on Python-dev
> > seemed to think was acceptable).
> >
> > --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
> >
> > PEP: 259
> > Title: Omit printing newline after newline
> > ...
> > Scope
> >
> >     This only affects printing of 8-bit strings.  It doesn't affect
> >     Unicode, although that could be considered a bug in the Unicode
> >     implementation.  It doesn't affect other objects whose string
> >     representation happens to end in a newline character.
>
> I guess I should fix the Unicode stuff ;-)
>
> > Risks
> >
> >     This change breaks some existing code.  For example:
> >
> >         print "Subject: PEP 259\n"
> >         print message_body
> >
> >     In current Python, this produces a blank line separating the
> >     subject from the message body; with the proposed change, the body
> >     begins immediately below the subject.  This is not very robust
> >     code anyway; it is better written as
> >
> >         print "Subject: PEP 259"
> >         print
> >         print message_body
> >
> >     In the test suite, only test_StringIO (which explicitly tests for
> >     this feature) breaks.
>
> Hmm, I think the above is a very typical idiom for RFC822
> style content and used in CGI scripts a lot. I'm not sure whether
> this change is worth getting the CGI crowd upset...
>
> Wouldn't it make sense to only use this technique in inter-
> active mode ?
>
> --
> Marc-Andre Lemburg
> CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
> ______________________________________________________________________
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>
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>