Comment on draft PEP for deprecating six builtins

[Roman Neuhauser]

> From: Alex Martelli <aleax at aleax.it>
> Subject: Re: Comment on draft PEP for deprecating six builtins
> To: python-list at python.org
> Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 07:01:59 GMT

> Raymond Hettinger wrote:
> Take, for example, 'apply'.  What need does it serve, ever since the
> forms *args and **kwds started applying to actual arguments (i.e., at
> function-call time) as well as to formal arguments (i.e., at function
> definition time)?  I.e., since 2.0 (or 1.6, I don't recall).  Indeed
> that would have been my first candidate for built-in deprecation (also
> for alphabetical reasons:-).
> 
> abs, buffer, chr, cmp, coerce, id, intern, oct, ord, are a few others
> that might be worth thinking about in terms of frequency of need --
> they're all needed some of the time, of course, but how often?  Often
> enough to be warranted as built-ins?  I surely use, e.g., map, more
> often than, e.g., cmp, coerce, or id.  Not to mention intern.  So why
> should map go away and the others remain?  This is not meant to be a
> rhetorical question, but to prompt active reflection/discussion/study.

    __builtin__.chr(int) -> int.chr()
    __builtin__.abs(int) -> int.abs()
    __builtin__.ord(str) -> str.ord()
    etc

    There's quite a few places in python that break the POLA rule, and
    the seemingly randomly chosen builtins are a prominent example.

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