Larry Hastings <la...@hastings.org> added the comment:

I assert that "followlinks" and "symlinks" are both bad names.  I dislike 
"followlinks" because "links" is ambiguous; both hard links and soft links are 
"links", but it's only modifying behavior regarding one of them.  Also, it's 
not PEP-8-compliant (which we can forgive because I'm pretty sure it predates 
PEP 8).  "symlinks" is far worse, because it's so ambiguous--quick, what does 
"symlinks=False" mean?  Examine symlinks, or follow them?

I agree that we can't rename "followlinks" and "symlinks" in 3.x.  All we can 
do for now is move forward.  At the same time I refused to be shackled by 
misguided old nomenclature.

So, certainly, I don't want to see "follow_symlinks" changed.  True story: the 
reason I started writing the patch for #14626 was so I could make sure it used 
the name "follow_symlinks".  I was dead certain Serhiy would use one of the 
existing names ;-)


If you really really want this to happen, you'll have to get Georg's 
permission--and the sooner the better.  Already I suspect it is too late.  If 
it ships in 3.3 it will absolutely be too late.


I suggest another approach: add a redundant "follow_symlinks" argument to 
os.walk, os.fwalk, and the shutil functions.  Prefer the new name in 
documentation but document the presence of the old one.  Throw an exception if 
both are specified in an invocation.  We could do that in 3.4.

----------
nosy: +georg.brandl

_______________________________________
Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue15202>
_______________________________________
_______________________________________________
Python-bugs-list mailing list
Unsubscribe: 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-bugs-list/archive%40mail-archive.com

Reply via email to