[Python-Dev] PEP 428: Pathlib -> stat caching

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Terry Reedy writes:
 > On 9/16/2013 4:14 PM, R. David Murray wrote:
 > 
 > > Well, we tend to avoid single boolean arguments in favor of differently
 > > named functions.
 > 
 > The stdlib has lots of boolean arguments. My impression is that they are 
 > to be avoided when they would change the return type or otherwise do 
 > something disjointly different. I do not think this would apply here.

I remember reading that the criterion is whether the argument is most
often given a literal value.  Then "stat_cache()" is preferable to
"stat(cache=True)".  OTOH, "stat(cache=want_cache)" is better than

    if want_cache:
        result = stat_cache()
    else:
        result = stat()

or "result = stat_cache() if want_cache else stat()".