[SciPy-Dev] prepending underscores to private module names

[Robert Kern]

On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 14:57, Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> A while ago we discussed making a clear distinction between public and
> private modules by using underscores consistently, see
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.scientific.devel/14936.
>
> I've done this for a few modules now, see
> https://github.com/rgommers/scipy/tree/underscores. Most files could simply
> be underscored, some other would conflict with extension modules so I also
> had to append _py to the name. Also I added a file doc/source/api.rst that
> states which modules are public (up for discussion of course).
>
> With google code search I checked how common it is to import from modules
> that are supposed to be private, for example "from scipy.optimize.optimize
> import fmin". It's not very common but does happen, so deprecation warnings
> should be put in.
>
> Before going further I'd like to check that this looks okay to people. What
> do you think?

I'm still -1 on it. I think it's unnecessary and potentially disruptive.

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless
enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as
though it had an underlying truth."
  -- Umberto Eco