A Freudian slip of *EPIC PROPORTIONS*!

[Steven D'Aprano]

Terry Reedy wrote:

> On 11/13/2014 6:11 PM, Rick Johnson wrote:
> 
>>      # The parse functions have no idea what to do with
>>      # Unicode, so replace all Unicode characters with "x".
>>      # This is "safe" so long as the only characters germane
>>      # to parsing the structure of Python are 7-bit ASCII.
>>      # It's *necessary* because Unicode strings don't have a
>>      # .translate() method that supports deletechars.
>>      uniphooey = str
> 
> It is customary to attribute quotes to their source.  This is from 2.x
> Lib/idlelib/PyParse.py.  The file was committed (and probably written)
> by David Scherer 2000-08-15.  Edits for unicode, including the above,
> were committed (and perhaps written) by Kurt B. Kaiser on 2001-07-13.

Correct.

The line in question was written by Kurt. We can find this out by using 
the hg annotate command. Change into the Lib/idlelib directory of the 
source repository, then use hg annotate command as follows:


[steve at ando idlelib]$ hg annotate PyParse.py | grep phoo
42050:             uniphooey = s
18555:             for raw in map(ord, uniphooey):

The numbers shown on the left are the revision IDs, so look at the 
older of the two:

[steve at ando idlelib]$ hg annotate -r 18555 PyParse.py | grep phoo
18555:             uniphooey = str
18555:             for raw in map(ord, uniphooey):

We can confirm that prior to that revision, the uniphooey lines 
didn't exist:

[steve at ando idlelib]$ hg annotate -r 18554 PyParse.py | grep phoo
<no output>


And then find out who is responsible:

[steve at ando idlelib]$ hg annotate -uvd -r 18555 PyParse.py | grep phoo
  Kurt B. Kaiser <kbk at shore.net> Fri Jul 13 20:33:46 2001 +0000:             uniphooey = str
  Kurt B. Kaiser <kbk at shore.net> Fri Jul 13 20:33:46 2001 +0000:             for raw in map(ord, uniphooey):


> I doubt GvR ever saw this code.  I expect KBK has changed opinions with
> respect to unicode in 13 years, as has most everyone else.

We don't know Kurt's intention with regard to the name, the "phooey" 
could refer to:

- the parse functions failing to understand Unicode;
- it being a nasty hack that assumes that Python will never use 
  Unicode characters for keywords or operators;
- it being necessary because u''.translate fails to support
  a deletechars parameter.


It's unlikely to refer to the Unicode character set itself.



-- 
Steven