Re: [Pyparsing] Strategies for use with ParseFile

[Paul M. <pt...@au...>]

David -

The naming schemes go like this (cf.
http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/, under "Naming Conventions"):

__xxx__ : "magic" methods useful by convention by Python internals.
Examples include __init__, __call__, __add__, __del__, __dict__ (pyparsing
uses methods like these __add__, __or__, __xor__, etc. to do the operator
overloading)

_xxx : quasi-private names, these do not get imported when using "from
module import *"

xxx_ : convention for naming variables that conflict with Python keywords
(class_, for_, etc.)

__xxx : class attributes with leading double-underscore are name-mangled by
the Python interpreter to "hide" them externally, a form of private but can
be worked around if you really, really, really need to (reference __xxx in
class Y as _Y__xxx, but to my mind, this is even a worse red flag than using
an attribute with a leading underscore).


As you've probably noticed, pyparsing doesn't fully comply with PEP8, mostly
with respect to using camel case names instead of names_with_underscores.  I
think it is just my own personal history - I used to use names with
underscores back in my C and PL/I days, and then "graduated" to mixed case
when I moved to Smalltalk, C++ and Java.


And I'm glad you were able to make some sense of my ramblings. :)

-- Paul