Stdlib, what's in, what's out (was: "Energy Efficiency across Programming Languages")

[John Ladasky]

On Monday, September 18, 2017 at 5:13:58 PM UTC-7, MRAB wrote:
> On 2017-09-18 23:08, b... at g...com wrote:

> > My rationale is simple, the authors of the libraries are not tied into the (c)Python release cycle, the PEP process or anything else, they can just get on with it.
> > 
> > Consider my approach many blue moons ago when I was asking when the "new" regex module was going to be incorporated into Python, and getting a bit miffed in my normal XXXL size hat autistic way when it didn't happen.  I am now convinved that back then I was very firmly wrong, and that staying out of the stdlib has been the best thing that could have happened to regex.  No doubt MRAB will disagree :)
> > 
> I was, at one time, in favour of including it in the stdlib, but then I 
> changed my mind. Being outside the stdlib _does_ give me more 
> flexibility. I can, as you said, just get on with it.
> I even have it on a Raspberry Pi. "pip install regex" is all it took. No 
> need for it to be in the stdlib. :-)

Inadvertently, you have just pointed out a weakness of not including something important and great in the stdlib.  There's an alternative to the re module, which at least a few members of the community consider to be superior, and which might therefore be widely used.  But... until now, I'd never heard of it.

I have come to understand from your other posts that adding something to the stdlib imposes significant constraints on the release schedules of those modules.  I can appreciate the hassle that might cause.  Still, now I wonder what I might be missing.