[XML-SIG] Ugh! Why are DOM access methods spelled with a leading '_'?

[Jim Fulton]

Uche Ogbuji wrote:
> 
> > Circular teferences are harmful in other ways that just GC.
> > For example, deep copy, and similar applications are certainly complicated
> > by them. In any case, designing an API that encourages memory leaks
> > in current Python seems like a pretty bad idea to me.
> 
> I hardly see how it encourages them as long as there is a documented method to
> avoiding them.

If you store the parent in the child, then you are causing a circular reference
which is very likely to cause a leak. An API that requires implementation of
__getattr__ to avoid storing the parent encourages storing the parent.

(snip)
> >
> > "As far as I know"?
> 
> It's pretty idiomatic for this phrase to have none of the evil connotation I
> think you're attaching to it.

I didn't attach any evil connotations to anything. From what I've seen 
over the last few days, the Python DOM API is well understood.

There's no reason why someone should have to say "As far as I know".
They should be able to point to the spec.

Jim

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