Comment on Draft Pep ver 4 -- Psuedo Deprecations of Builtins

[John Roth]

"Raymond Hettinger" <python at rcn.com> wrote in message
news:aan5hv$aor$1 at bob.news.rcn.net...
> Reading all of the posts on the deprecation pep shows that there is a
> tension between ability to remove cruft versus breakage of old
programs.
> My idea for getting the best of both is psuedo-deprecation.
>
> Let's take anything that shouldn't be there anymore (read as anything
that
> wouldn't be put in again if we were doing this from scratch) in a
separate
> section of the library reference called Obsolete Constructs.  We'll
pull it
> out of the main body of the docs and the tutorial; remove uses of it
from
> the Python library; and ask authors not to even mention the
> psuedo-deprecates
> (except in a separate section devoted to being able to read old code).

Agreed.

> I no longer think map(), filter(), and reduce() should even be
> psuedo-deprecated,
> but apply(), oct() and hex() are prime candidates.  The input()
function
> should
> still be considered for genuine deprecation and deletion, but that
reflects
> my
> view of input() as a bug.

I strongly disagree about apply(). The only use I've found for it
varies the function which it calls, not the parameter lists! Having
variable parameter lists doesn't hack it - I need the variable
function.

John Roth