making python scripts backwards compatible

[Sean 'Shaleh' Perry]

On 04-May-2002 J.Jacob wrote:
> I would like to make a request.
> 
> Today I spent again some time converting python code.  It
> was in the SimpleXMLRPCServer.py file.  I wanted to use it
> remotely on another computer but it gave errors because of
> list comprehension and using the "".method() syntax
> instead of importing string.  The reason was that other
> computer was still running python 1.5.2.  I could not
> upgrade the remote computer (no root access) and even if i
> could the problem would come up soon again when the
> (mobile agent-)program relocated.
> 

I agree, it is quite annoying.

It is pretty easy to write a python script to catch a lot of this.  += and its
friends can be programmatically turned into a = a + .. same goes with string
methods.

list comprehensions however require human intervention.  A bigger problem is
the change in scope rules.

I find it particularly annoying that the python group makes this assumption we
are all running last week's python.  Not everyone owns the machine their
scripts run on.