From 5a43c3b83ab93638d6c4346973e6f63ee51386ec Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Yury Selivanov <yury@magic.io>
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2017 17:06:41 -0500
Subject: [PATCH] pep-567: Rejected Ideas, Token usability, fixes (#511)

---
 pep-0567.rst | 63 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-------
 1 file changed, 55 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)

diff --git a/pep-0567.rst b/pep-0567.rst
index abfdef9aa..7778b86bb 100644
--- a/pep-0567.rst
+++ b/pep-0567.rst
@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ Abstract
 
 This PEP proposes a new ``contextvars`` module and a set of new
 CPython C APIs to support context variables.  This concept is
-similar to thread-local storage (TLS), but, unlike TLS, it allows
+similar to thread-local storage (TLS), but, unlike TLS, it also allows
 correctly keeping track of values per asynchronous task, e.g.
 ``asyncio.Task``.
 
@@ -174,12 +174,6 @@ and the ``ContextVar.reset(token)`` method, allows context variables
 to be removed from the context if they were not in it before the
 ``set()`` call.
 
-Token API allows to get around having a ``ContextVar.delete()``
-method, which is incompatible with chained contexts design of
-:pep:`550`.  Future compatibility with :pep:`550` is desired
-(at least for Python 3.7) in case there is demand to support
-context variables in generators and asynchronous generators.
-
 
 contextvars.Context
 -------------------
@@ -463,7 +457,7 @@ Implementation Notes
   using Hash Array Mapped Tries (HAMT).  They allow for O(log N)
   ``set`` operation, and for O(1) ``get_context()`` function, where
   *N* is the number of items in the dictionary.  For a detailed
-  analysis of HAMT performance please refer to :pep:`550`.
+  analysis of HAMT performance please refer to :pep:`550` [1]_.
 
 * ``ContextVar.get()`` has an internal cache for the most recent
   value, which allows to bypass a hash lookup.  This is similar
@@ -489,6 +483,51 @@ Summary of the New APIs
   context.
 
 
+Design Considerations
+=====================
+
+Why contextvars.Token and not ContextVar.unset()?
+-------------------------------------------------
+
+The Token API allows to get around having a ``ContextVar.unset()``
+method, which is incompatible with chained contexts design of
+:pep:`550`.  Future compatibility with :pep:`550` is desired
+(at least for Python 3.7) in case there is demand to support
+context variables in generators and asynchronous generators.
+
+The Token API also offers better usability: the user does not have
+to special-case absence of a value. Compare::
+
+    token = cv.get()
+    try:
+        cv.set(blah)
+        # code
+    finally:
+        cv.reset(token)
+
+with::
+
+    _deleted = object()
+    old = cv.get(default=_deleted)
+    try:
+        cv.set(blah)
+        # code
+    finally:
+        if old is _deleted:
+            cv.unset()
+        else:
+            cv.set(old)
+
+
+Rejected Ideas
+==============
+
+Replication of threading.local() interface
+------------------------------------------
+
+Please refer to :pep:`550` where this topic is covered in detail: [2]_.
+
+
 Backwards Compatibility
 =======================
 
@@ -501,6 +540,14 @@ code unmodified, but will automatically enable support for
 asynchronous code.
 
 
+References
+==========
+
+.. [1] https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0550/#appendix-hamt-performance-analysis
+
+.. [2] https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0550/#replication-of-threading-local-interface
+
+
 Copyright
 =========