Third Draft: Pep for Deprecating Builtins

[holger krekel]

On Mon, Apr 29, 2002 at 02:03:02PM -0400, Raymond Hettinger wrote:
> From the comments, I've learned:
> 
> 1. map, filter, divmod, and pow may be immovable and should
>     be left alone.
> 2. reduce has fewer friends, but should probably also be
>     left alone
> 
> 3. input() has almost no supporters and should probably be
>     deprecated.  it is security risk, a trap for new users, easily
>     replaced with eval(raw_input), and is named in a way that
>     doesn't suggest that eval is occurring.
> 
> 4. apply() was repeatedly suggested as another candidate for
>     deprecation since the * and ** forms make it obsolete
> 
> 5.  oct() is another candidate based on the rarity of usage
> 
> 6. command line options and environment variables are
>     universally hated, so this idea is dropped
> 
> 7. the language needs some means of deprecating so that clutter
>     does accumulate.  that means needs to be well documented,
>     have a long, slow phase-in, and have a mechasism for
>     restoring old behavior if it is ever needed.
> 
> 8. there is some lumberjack person who is very angry
> 
> 9. putting new functional tools in a separate module was
>     well received.

Thanks for the good summary (especially 8)

    Holger