python-peps/pep-0042.txt

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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.
This PEP should really be separated into four different categories
(categories due to Laura Creighton):
1. BDFL rejects as a bad idea. Don't come back with it.
2. BDFL will put in if somebody writes the code. (Or at any rate,
BDFL will say 'change this and I will put it in' if you show up
with code.)
(possibly divided into:
2a) BDFL would really like to see some code!
2b) BDFL is never going to be enthusiastic about this, but
will work it in when it's easy.
)
3. If you show up with code, BDFL will make a pronouncement. It
might be ICK.
4. This is too vague. This is rejected, but only on the grounds
of vagueness. If you like this enhancement, make a new 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://www.python.org/sf/210835
- 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://www.python.org/sf/215555
- Non-accidental IEEE-754 support (Infs, NaNs, settable traps, etc).
Big project.
pickle lacks float('inf')
http://www.python.org/sf/445484
- Windows: Trying to create (or even access) files with certain magic
names can hang or crash Windows systems. This is really a bug in the
OSes, but some apps try to shield users from it. When it happens,
the symptoms are very confusing.
Hang using files named prn.txt, etc
http://www.python.org/sf/481171
- eval and free variables: It might be useful if there was a way
to pass bindings for free variables to eval when a code object
with free variables is passed.
http://www.python.org/sf/443866
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://www.python.org/sf/210819
- The urllib module should support proxies which require
authenication. See SourceForge bug #210619 for information:
http://www.python.org/sf/210619
- 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://www.python.org/sf/212317
- 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://www.python.org/sf/210599
- 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://www.python.org/sf/214557
- Extend Windows utime to accept directory paths.
http://www.python.org/sf/214245
- Extend copy.py to module & function types.
http://www.python.org/sf/214553
- Better checking for bad input to marshal.load*().
http://www.python.org/sf/214754
- Generalize eval to accept any mapping objects for locals and globals.
http://www.python.org/sf/215126
- 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://www.python.org/sf/210678
- cgi.py's FieldStorage class should be more conservative with
memory in the face of large binary file uploads.
http://www.python.org/sf/210674
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://www.python.org/sf/219806
- urllib should support proxy definitions that contain just the
host and port
http://www.python.org/sf/210849
- urlparse should be updated to comply with RFC 2396, which
defines optional parameters for each segment of the page.
http://www.python.org/sf/210834
- 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://www.python.org/sf/216716
- 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
- Killing a thread from another thread. Or maybe sending a
signal. Or maybe raising an asynchronous exception.
http://www.python.org/sf/221115
- The debugger (pdb) should understand packages.
http://www.python.org/sf/210631
- 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://www.python.org/sf/232493
- Fatter math module docs and docstrings.
http://www.python.org/sf/426539
- 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://www.python.org/sf/415692
- Jim Fulton pointed out that binascii's b2a_base64() function
has situations where it makes sense not to append a newline,
or to append something else than a newline.
Proposal:
- 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://www.python.org/sf/415694
C API wishes
- 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://www.python.org/sf/210821
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.
- Add unsigneds to ParseTuple/BuildValue (due to David Beazley)
Since "integers" can now have arbitrary precision and can
represent large unsigned values, can you add three new format
characters to PyArg_ParseTuple() and Py_BuildValue() for the C
datatypes "unsigned int", "unsigned long", and "unsigned long
long"?
The "u" and "l" namespace is a little crowded (and I don't think
you would want to break that). However, here's one idea:
'I' - unsigned int (consistent with H and B)
'p' - unsigned long ('p' is for positive)
'P' - unsigned long long
http://www.python.org/sf/454896
Tools
- Python could use a GUI builder.
http://www.python.org/sf/210820
Building and Installing
- 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://www.python.org/sf/216326
- 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://www.python.org/sf/222215
- 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://www.python.org/sf/219221
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