python-peps/pep-0042.txt

PEP: 42
Title: Feature Requests
Version: $Revision$
Author: Jeremy Hylton <jeremy@zope.com>
Status: Active
Type: Informational
Created: 12-Sep-2000


Introduction

    This PEP contains a list of feature requests that may be
    considered for future versions of Python.  Large feature requests
    should not be included here, but should be described in separate
    PEPs; however a large feature request that doesn't have its own
    PEP can be listed here until its own PEP is created.  See
    pep-0000.txt for details.

    This PEP was created to allow us to close bug reports that are really
    feature requests.  Marked as Open, they distract from the list of real
    bugs (which should ideally be less than a page).  Marked as Closed, they
    tend to be forgotten.  The procedure now is:  if a bug report is really
    a feature request, add the feature request to this PEP; mark the bug as
    "feature request", "later", and "closed"; and add a comment to the bug
    saying that this is the case (mentioning the PEP explicitly).  It is
    also acceptable to move large feature requests directly from the bugs
    database to a separate PEP.


Core Language / Builtins

    - A builtin function that returns the number of bytes an object
      uses internally.  Apparently mxTools has a sizeof function that
      returns the size of the object struct itself.

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=110835&group_id=5470

    - Add C API functions to help Windows users who are building
      embedded applications where the FILE * structure does not match
      the FILE * the interpreter was compiled with.

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=110821&group_id=5470

      See this bug report for a specific suggestion that will allow a
      Borland C++ builder application to interact with a python.dll
      build with MSVC.

    - The parser should handle more deeply nested parse trees.

      The following will fail -- eval("["*50 + "]"*50) -- because the
      parser has a hard-coded limit on stack size.  This limit should
      be raised or removed.  Removal would be hard because the
      current compiler can overflow the C stack if the nesting is too
      deep.

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=115555&group_id=5470

    - The buffer interface could be smarter when a buffer object is
      created that depends on another buffer object -- if the
      original buffer object has no base, the depending object will
      have no base either.  It could be argued that the depending
      object should have the original object as a base.  Or not.

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=116405&group_id=5470


Standard Library

    - The test suite is incomplete (and probably always will be).
      This is a reminder to people that more regression tests are
      needed.

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&group_id=5470&bug_id=110819

    - The urllib module should support proxies which require
      authenication.  See SourceForge bug #110619 for information:

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=110619&group_id=5470

    - Use objects with attributes in place of tuples of values for
      return values in several places in the library.  Two specific
      APIs which could use this treatment include os.stat() and
      os.statvfs(); see SourceForge bug #111481:

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=111481&group_id=5470

      which shows very specifically why this approach is better than
      the tuple approach: additional attributes can be added as needed
      without having as detrimental an affect on existing code.

    - os.rename() should be modified to handle EXDEV errors on
      platforms that don't allow rename() to operate across filesystem
      boundaries by copying the file over and removing the original.
      Linux is one system that requires this treatment.

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=112317&group_id=5470

    - signal handling doesn't always work as expected.  E.g. if
      sys.stdin.readline() is interrupted by a (returning) signal
      handler, it returns "".  It would be better to make it raise an
      exception (corresponding to EINTR) or to restart.  But these
      changes would have to applied to all places that can do blocking
      interruptable I/O.  So it's a big project.

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=110599&group_id=5470

    - Ensure that all .py files in the std library use 4-space indents and
      no hard tabs.  This was actually a PEP200 precondition for the
      release of 2.0b1, but got misinterpreted as the weaker condition that
      tabnanny not complain.  Tim Peters will do this now, but, since about
      250 files are affected, will wait until after 2.0final is released.

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=114557&group_id=5470

    - Port the Python SSL code to Windows.

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=110683&group_id=5470

    - Extend Windows utime to accept directory paths.

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=114245&group_id=5470

    - Extend copy.py to class, module & function types.

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=114553&group_id=5470

    - Better checking for bad input to marshal.load*().

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=114754&group_id=5470

    - Generalize eval to accept any mapping objects for locals and globals.

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=115126&group_id=5470

    - Add a portable implementation of time.strptime() that works in
      clearly defined ways on all platforms.

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=115146&group_id=5470
      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=112244&group_id=5470

    - rfc822.py should be more lenient than the spec in the types of
      address fields it parses.  Specifically, an invalid address of
      the form "From: Amazon.com <delivers-news2@amazon.com>" should
      be parsed correctly.

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=110678&group_id=5470

    - cgi.py's FieldStorage class should be more conservative with
      memory in the face of large binary file uploads.

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=110674&group_id=5470

      There are two issues here: first, because
      read_lines_to_outerboundary() uses readline() it is possible
      that a large amount of data will be read into memory for a
      binary file upload.  This should probably look at the
      Content-Type header of the section and do a chunked read if it's
      a binary type.

      The second issue was related to the self.lines attribute, which
      was removed in revision 1.56 of cgi.py (see also):

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=119806&group_id=5470

    - urllib should support proxy definitions that contain just the
      host and port

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=110849&group_id=5470

    - urlparse should be updated to comply with RFC 2396, which
      defines optional parameters for each segment of the page.

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=110834&group_id=5470

    - The exceptions raised by pickle and cPickle are currently
      different; these should be unified (probably the exceptions
      should be defined in a helper module that's imported by both).
      [No bug report; I just thought of this.]

    - More standard library routines should support Unicode.  For
      example, urllib.quote() could convert Unicode strings to UTF-8
      and then do the usual %HH conversion.  But this is not the only
      one!

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=116716&group_id=5470

    - There should be a way to say that you don't mind if str() or
      __str__() return a Unicode string object.  Or a different
      function -- ustr() has been proposed.  Or something...

      http://sf.net/patch/?func=detailpatch&patch_id=101527&group_id=5470

    - A UTF-7 codec.  It's not a great encoding, but it's required in
      some places (e.g. IMAP mailbox names with Asian language
      support).  [No bug report; private email from Seo Junwon
      <linuxqna@chollian.net>.]

    - Killing a thread from another thread.  Or maybe sending a
      signal.  Or maybe raising an asynchronous exception.

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=121115&group_id=5470

    - The debugger (pdb) should understand packages.

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=110631&group_id=5470

    - The cmath library should be rewritten in Python.

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=110838&group_id=5470

    - Could use a more comprehensive email module.  (But then again,
      that may be better done as a 3rd party project.)

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=121208&group_id=5470

    - every built-in function or method (including all core
      extensions) that accepts a string, dict, or list, should also
      accept a UserString, UserDict, or UserList.  (The latter two
      should more generally accept all mappings, all sequences.)

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=132493&group_id=5470

    - Fatter math module docs and docstrings.

      http://sf.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=426539&group_id=5470&atid=105470

    - New math module radians() and degrees() functions.

      http://sf.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=426539&group_id=5470&atid=105470

    - Jim Fulton suggested the following: 

        I wonder if it would be a good idea to have a new kind of
        temporary file that stored data in memory unless:

        - The data exceeds some size, or 

        - Somebody asks for a fileno. 

        Then the cgi module (and other apps) could use this thing in a
        uniform way.

      http://sf.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=415692&group_id=5470&atid=355470

    - Jim Fulton pointed out that binascii's b2a_base64() function
      restricts the length of its input to 57 characters for no good
      reason: the code would work for any input size but for this
      check. Also, there are situations where it makes sense not to
      append a newline, or to append something else than a newline.

      Proposal: 

        - get rid of the input size check 

        - add an optional argument giving the delimiter string to be
          appended, defaulting to "\n"

        - possibly special-case None as the delimiter string to avoid
          adding the pad bytes too???

      http://sf.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=415694&group_id=5470&atid=355470


Tools

    - IDLE should reload & recompile modules changed externally.  To
      be done properly, scripts will have to be run in a separate
      process.

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=110841&group_id=5470

    - Python could use a GUI builder.

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=110820&group_id=5470

    - IDLE's key bindings should be revised.  Some of the advertised
      bindings don't even work!

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=110659&group_id=5470

    - IDLE has deep problems running threaded programs.  Re-architect.

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=121963&group_id=5470

    - Would be nice if IDLE showed which structure was being closed upon
      typing one of "})]".  Heck, a string too, for that matter.
      The bug report also says something about TAB I didn't grok.

      http://sf.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=404444&group_id=5470&atid=105470


Building and Installing

    - You should be able to configure and build Python with a
      cross-compiler.

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=110836&group_id=5470

    - Modules/makesetup should make sure the 'config.c' file it
      generates from the various Setup files, is valid C. It currently
      accepts module names with characters that are not allowable in
      Python or C identifiers.

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=116326&group_id=5470

    - There's a name conflict on case insensitive filesystems (in
      particular Mac OSX) between the directory "Python" and the key
      build target "python".  That's currently solved by abusing the
      --with-suffix option, but that's not ideal (since that also
      causes the binary to be *installed* as python.exe).  What should
      be the solution?

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=122215&group_id=5470

    - Building from source should not attempt to overwrite the
      Include/graminit.h and Parser/graminit.c files, at least for
      people downloading a source release rather than working from CVS
      or snapshots.  Some people find this a problem in unusual build
      environments.

      http://sf.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=119221&group_id=5470

    - There should be at least an option to build Python as a shared
      library.

      http://sf.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=400938&group_id=5470&atid=305470


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