Sandbox::https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-dev@python.org/2023/3/

Proposal: Allow non-default after default arguments
by Sebastian Rittau Oct. 16, 2023

Oct. 16, 2023

Currently, Python doesn't allow non-default arguments after default arguments: >>> def foo(x=None, y): pass File "<stdin>", line 1 def foo(x=None, y): pass ^ SyntaxError: non-default argument follows default argument I believe that at the time this was introduced, no use cases for this were known and this is is supposed to prevent a source of bugs. I have two use cases for this, one fringe, but valid, the other more important: The fringe use case: Suppose you have a function that takes a 2D coordinate value as separate "x" and "y" arguments. The "x" argument is optional, the "y" argument isn't. Currently there are two ways to do this, none of them particularly great: def foo(y, x): # reverse x and y arguments, confusing ... def foo(x, y=None): # Treat the x argument as y if only one argument is provided if y is None: x, y = y, x ... To me, the "natural" solution looks like this: def foo(x=None, y): ... # Called like this: foo(1, 2) foo(y=2) This could also be useful when evolving APIs. For example there is a function "bar" that takes two required arguments. In a later version, the first argument gains a useful default, the second doesn't. There is no sensible way to evolve the API at the moment. The more important use case involves @overloads. A condensed example of a function where the return type depends on an "encoding" parameter, followed by further parameters that could be called like this: foo(123, "utf-8") # would return bytes foo(encoding="utf-8") foo(123, None) # would return str foo(encoding=None) foo(x=123) # would return str foo() This could ideally be written as: @overload def foo(x: int = ..., encoding: None = ...) -> str: ... @overload def foo(x: int = ..., encoding: str) -> bytes: ... # plus the actual implementation But due to the syntax constraint, this needs to be hacked around with a third overload: @overload def foo(x: int = ... encoding: None = ...) -> str: ... @overload def foo(x: int, encoding: str) -> bytes: ... # for foo(123, "utf-8") @overload def foo(*, encoding: str) -> bytes: ... # for foo(encoding="utf-8") Not only is this hard to read, real examples in typeshed are usually more complex, with many arguments before or after the affected argument or even multiple affected arguments. This often becomes too complex to write or maintain. Here is one example from the wild: https://github.com/python/typeshed/blob/b95b729b9e07ab21d252701af0f5b740467… Allowing non-default arguments after default arguments would solve both use cases above and eliminates a special case. I'm also not sure what exactly the current SyntaxError really protects us from. Adding a non-default after a default argument can't really lead bugs. - Sebastian

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Python multithreading without the GIL
by Sam Gross July 31, 2023

July 31, 2023

Hi, I've been working on changes to CPython to allow it to run without the global interpreter lock. I'd like to share a working proof-of-concept that can run without the GIL. The proof-of-concept involves substantial changes to CPython internals, but relatively few changes to the C-API. It is compatible with many C extensions: extensions must be rebuilt, but usually require small or no modifications to source code. I've built compatible versions of packages from the scientific Python ecosystem, and they are installable through the bundled "pip". Source code: https://github.com/colesbury/nogil Design overview: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18CXhDb1ygxg-YXNBJNzfzZsDFosB5e6BfnXLlej… My goal with the proof-of-concept is to demonstrate that removing the GIL is feasible and worthwhile, and that the technical ideas of the project could serve as a basis of such an effort. I'd like to start a discussion about these ideas and gauge the community's interest in this approach to removing the GIL. Regards, Sam Gross colesbury(a)gmail.com / sgross(a)fb.com

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Mixed Python/C debugging
by Skip Montanaro April 26, 2023

April 26, 2023

Having tried comp.lang.python with no response, I turn here... After at least ten years away from Python's run-time interpreter & byte code compiler, I'm getting set to familiarize myself with that again. This will, I think, entail debugging a mixed Python/C environment. I'm an Emacs user and am aware that GDB since 7.0 has support for debugging at the Python code level. Is Emacs+GDB my best bet? Are there any Python IDEs which support C-level breakpoints and debugging? Thanks, Skip

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PEP 448 review
by Guido van Rossum March 29, 2023

March 29, 2023

I'm back, I've re-read the PEP, and I've re-read the long thread with "(no subject)". I think Georg Brandl nailed it: """ *I like the "sequence and dict flattening" part of the PEP, mostly because itis consistent and should be easy to understand, but the comprehension syntaxenhancements seem to be bad for readability and "comprehending" what the codedoes.The call syntax part is a mixed bag on the one hand it is nice to be consistent with the extended possibilities in literals (flattening), but on the other hand there would be small but annoying inconsistencies anyways (e.g. the duplicate kwarg case above).* """ Greg Ewing followed up explaining that the inconsistency between dict flattening and call syntax is inherent in the pre-existing different rules for dicts vs. keyword args: {'a':1, 'a':2} results in {'a':2}, while f(a=1, a=2) is an error. (This form is a SyntaxError; the dynamic case f(a=1, **{'a': 1}) is a TypeError.) For me, allowing f(*a, *b) and f(**d, **e) and all the other combinations for function calls proposed by the PEP is an easy +1 -- it's a straightforward extension of the existing pattern, and anybody who knows what f(x, *a) does will understand f(x, *a, y, *b). Guessing what f(**d, **e) means shouldn't be hard either. Understanding the edge case for duplicate keys with f(**d, **e) is a little harder, but the error messages are pretty clear, and it is not a new edge case. The sequence and dict flattening syntax proposals are also clean and logical -- we already have *-unpacking on the receiving side, so allowing *x in tuple expressions reads pretty naturally (and the similarity with *a in argument lists certainly helps). From here, having [a, *x, b, *y] is also natural, and then the extension to other displays is natural: {a, *x, b, *y} and {a:1, **d, b:2, **e}. This, too, gets a +1 from me. So that leaves comprehensions. IIRC, during the development of the patch we realized that f(*x for x in xs) is sufficiently ambiguous that we decided to disallow it -- note that f(x for x in xs) is already somewhat of a special case because an argument can only be a "bare" generator expression if it is the only argument. The same reasoning doesn't apply (in that form) to list, set and dict comprehensions -- while f(x for x in xs) is identical in meaning to f((x for x in xs)), [x for x in xs] is NOT the same as [(x for x in xs)] (that's a list of one element, and the element is a generator expression). The basic premise of this part of the proposal is that if you have a few iterables, the new proposal (without comprehensions) lets you create a list or generator expression that iterates over all of them, essentially flattening them: >>> xs = [1, 2, 3] >>> ys = ['abc', 'def'] >>> zs = [99] >>> [*xs, *ys, *zs] [1, 2, 3, 'abc', 'def', 99] >>> But now suppose you have a list of iterables: >>> xss = [[1, 2, 3], ['abc', 'def'], [99]] >>> [*xss[0], *xss[1], *xss[2]] [1, 2, 3, 'abc', 'def', 99] >>> Wouldn't it be nice if you could write the latter using a comprehension? >>> xss = [[1, 2, 3], ['abc', 'def'], [99]] >>> [*xs for xs in xss] [1, 2, 3, 'abc', 'def', 99] >>> This is somewhat seductive, and the following is even nicer: the *xs position may be an expression, e.g.: >>> xss = [[1, 2, 3], ['abc', 'def'], [99]] >>> [*xs[:2] for xs in xss] [1, 2, 'abc', 'def', 99] >>> On the other hand, I had to explore the possibilities here by experimenting in the interpreter, and I discovered some odd edge cases (e.g. you can parenthesize the starred expression, but that seems a syntactic accident). All in all I am personally +0 on the comprehension part of the PEP, and I like that it provides a way to "flatten" a sequence of sequences, but I think very few people in the thread have supported this part. Therefore I would like to ask Neil to update the PEP and the patch to take out the comprehension part, so that the two "easy wins" can make it into Python 3.5 (basically, I am accepting two-thirds of the PEP :-). There is some time yet until alpha 2. I would also like code reviewers (Benjamin?) to start reviewing the patch <http://bugs.python.org/issue2292>, taking into account that the comprehension part needs to be removed. -- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)

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Debugging of native extensions on windows
by Rokas Kupstys March 14, 2023

March 14, 2023

Hello! I am dropping this mail to bring up an issue which cost me three good evenings of time. Now that i figured it out i believe it is quite a serious usability problem. Gist of the problem: i have some C++ code wrapped with SWIG, so a native extension. As with all software - there was a bug. However, no matter what i did - i could not debug it in a native debugger. I ran ".venv/Scripts/python.exe script.py" in a native debugger and breakpoints would not be hit, application would crash eventually. This was especially confusing, because exact same setup worked just fine on linux. I eventually stumbled on to process list showing ".venv/Scripts/python.exe" having spawned a subprocess... Which led me to "PC/launcher.c" which is what ".venv/Scripts/python.exe" really is. I cant find much information about this behavior in documentation even after the fact. All in all, this was quite confusing. So now every time i want to debug a native extension i have to start a program and then attach a debugger to it, instead of just hitting "Debug" button in IDE. It gets worse if crash happens immediately, which means i have to resort to things like adding a message box somewhere to block execution and give me enough time to attach the debugger. It works in the end, but user experience is really not great. But whats worse - this is such a non-obvious behavior that many more people may trip on it and waste their time. Documenting this behavior would be of little help too, as there is no clear path from the issue to the documentation on the matter... So there it is. I am sure it is the way it is for a good reason. However, this is a very error-prone process which is likely to waste people's time. So maybe this behavior could be reconsidered? Or maybe there is a solution already, which escaped me? -- -- Rokas Kupstys

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Re: please consider changing --enable-unicode default to ucs4
by Jonathan Benson March 14, 2023

March 14, 2023

Sent from my iPhone

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Python 3.12.0 alpha 6 released
by Thomas Wouters March 8, 2023

March 8, 2023

I'm pleased to announce the release of Python 3.12 alpha 6. https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-3120a6/ *This is an early developer preview of Python 3.12.* Major new features of the 3.12 series, compared to 3.11 Python 3.12 is still in development. This release, 3.12.0a6 is the sixth of seven planned alpha releases. Alpha releases are intended to make it easier to test the current state of new features and bug fixes and to test the release process. During the alpha phase, features may be added up until the start of the beta phase (2023-05-08) and, if necessary, may be modified or deleted up until the release candidate phase (2023-07-31). Please keep in mind that this is a preview release and its use is not recommended for production environments. Many new features for Python 3.12 are still being planned and written. Among the new major new features and changes so far: - Even more improved error messages. More exceptions potentially caused by typos now make suggestions to the user. - Support for the Linux perf profiler to report Python function names in traces. - The deprecated wstr and wstr_length members of the C implementation of unicode objects were removed, per PEP 623 <https://peps.python.org/pep-0623>. - In the unittest module, a number of long deprecated methods and classes were removed. (They had been deprecated since Python 3.1 or 3.2). - The deprecated smtpd and distutils modules have been removed (see PEP 594 <https://peps.python.org/pep-0594> and PEP 632 <https://peps.python.org/pep-0632>. The setuptools package (installed by default in virtualenvs and many other places) continues to provide the distutils module. - A number of other old, broken and deprecated functions, classes and methods have been removed. - Invalid backslash escape sequences in strings now warn with SyntaxWarning instead of DeprecationWarning, making them more visible. (They will become syntax errors in the future.) - The internal representation of integers has changed in preparation for performance enhancements. (This should not affect most users as it is an internal detail, but it may cause problems for Cython-generated code.) - (Hey, fellow core developer, if a feature you find important is missing from this list, let Thomas know <thomas(a)python.org>.) For more details on the changes to Python 3.12, see What's new in Python 3.12. The next pre-release of Python 3.12 will be 3.12.0a7, currently scheduled for 2023-04-03. More resources Online Documentation <https://docs.python.org/3.12/>. PEP 693 <https://peps.python.org/pep-0693>, the Python 3.12 Release Schedule. Report bugs via GitHub Issues <https://github.com/python/cpython/issues>. Help fund Python and its community <https://www.python.org/psf/donations/>. And now for something completely different Let me not to the marriage of true minds > Admit impediments. Love is not love > Which alters when it alteration finds, > Or bends with the remover to remove: > O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, > That looks on tempests and is never shaken; > It is the star to every wandering bark, > Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. > Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks > Within his bending sickle’s compass come; > Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, > But bears it out even to the edge of doom. > If this be error, and upon me prov’d, > I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d. *Sonnet 116*, by William Shakespeare. Enjoy the new releases Thanks to all of the many volunteers who help make Python Development and these releases possible! Please consider supporting our efforts by volunteering yourself or through organization contributions to the Python Software Foundation. Regards from unexpectedly chilly California, Your release team, Thomas Wouters Ned Deily Steve Dower -- Thomas Wouters <thomas(a)python.org>

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Python-Dev

March 2023