[New-bugs-announce] [issue14823] Simplify threading.Lock.acquire() description

[Q]

New submission from Q <abonent at gmail.com>:

Hi there,

I suggest to improve the description of Lock.acquire()
[ http://docs.python.org/library/threading.html#threading.Lock.acquire ]
in the following way:

>>>>> current version >>>>>
Lock.acquire([blocking])

   Acquire a lock, blocking or non-blocking.

   When invoked without arguments, block until the lock is unlocked,
   then set it to locked, and return true.

   When invoked with the *blocking* argument set to true, do the same
   thing as when called without arguments, and return true.

   When invoked with the *blocking* argument set to false, do not
   block.  If a call without an argument would block, return false
   immediately; otherwise, do the same thing as when called without
   arguments, and return true.

<<<<< current version <<<<<


>>>>> suggested version >>>>>
Lock.acquire([blocking])

   Acquire a lock, blocking or non-blocking.

   When invoked with the *blocking* argument set to true 
   (the default), block until the lock is unlocked, 
   then set it to locked, and return true.

   When invoked with the *blocking* argument set to false, do not
   block.  If a call without an argument would block, return false
   immediately; otherwise, set the lock to locked, and return true.

<<<<< suggested version <<<<<

The idea is to simplify the structure of the explanation: get rid of an unnecessary "goto" -- "do the same thing as" as well as the extra branching ("when invoked without arguments" ... "when invoked with *blocking* argument set to true") .

The suggested patch for the text version of the documentation ( http://docs.python.org/download.html -> http://docs.python.org/archives/python-2.7.3-docs-text.tar.bz2 ) is attached. 

PS. I did not dare to capitalize the boolean variables ("true" -> "True") to adhere to the general style of the document (obviously inherited from Java). For the same reason I didn't either change the argument signature from "[blocking]" to "[blocking=True]".

----------
assignee: docs at python
components: Documentation
files: threading.txt.patch
keywords: patch
messages: 160786
nosy: docs at python, thread13
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: Simplify threading.Lock.acquire() description
versions: Python 2.6, Python 2.7
Added file: http://bugs.python.org/file25604/threading.txt.patch

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