python-peps/pep-0042.txt

PEP: 42
Title: Feature Requests
Version: $Revision$
Author: Jeremy Hylton <jeremy@beopen.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://sourceforge.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://sourceforge.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.

    - "continue" inside "try" should work as expect instead of raising
      SyntaxError.  The current behavior is considered an implementation
      limit.

          while 1:
              try:
                  continue
              except:
                  pass

      http://sourceforge.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=110830&group_id=5470

    - When the compiler pass complains about something,
      e.g. "continue" inside "try", it should complain about the
      *first* error, not the second or last.

      http://sourceforge.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&group_id=5470&bug_id=115143


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

    - Support passive FTP via urllib

      http://sourceforge.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=110848&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://sourceforge.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://sourceforge.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://sourceforge.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://sourceforge.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=114557&group_id=5470

    - Port the Python SSL code to Windows.

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

    - Extend Windows utime to accept directory paths.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      Second, because the lines that are read are stored in an
      instance attribute (self.lines -- a list), the uploaded data is
      never freed.  self.lines isn't definied as part of the public
      interface it /might/ be safe to remove it.  OTOH, removing it
      will break code clever and nosy code.

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

      http://sourceforge.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://sourceforge.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.]

Tools

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

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

    - Python could use a GUI builder.

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


Building and Installing

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

      https://sourceforge.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=110836&group_id=5470



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