[path-PEP] Path inherits from basestring again

[Reinhold Birkenfeld]

Peter Hansen wrote:
> Reinhold Birkenfeld wrote:
>  > Peter Hansen wrote:
>  >> Would basestring() be a better name?
> 
>  > "tobase"?
>  > "tostring"?
>  > "tobasestring"?
> 
> Of these choices, the latter would be preferable.
> 
>  > Alternative is to set a class attribute "Base" of the
>  > Path class. Or export PathBase as a name from the module
>  > (but that's not quite useful, because I
>  > expect Path to be imported via "from os.path import Path").
> 
> I don't understand how that would work.  An attribute on the *class*? 
> What would it be, a callable?  So mypath.Base(mypath) or something? 
> Please elaborate...

[_base is str or unicode]

class Path:
    Base = _base
    [...]

So you could do "Path.Base(mypath)" or "mypath.Base(mypath)".

> What about just .basestring, as a read-only attribute on the Path object?

Reasonable, though the term as such is preoccupied too.

Reinhold