api stability

[John A Meinel]

Aaron Bentley wrote:
> Robert Collins wrote:
> | __foo -> private to me
> | _foo -> private to me and subclasses
> | foo -> public.
> |
> | Note that _foo is therefor a public symbol if the class is public.
> 
> I don't understand this logic.  If _foo is private to me and subclasses,
> why would it also be public?
> 
> Wherever I've used _foo, I've intended to warn users that foo was not
> guaranteed to be supported, but use it if you must.
> 
> Aaron

Specifically we have classes like InventoryEntry which has:

class InventoryEntry:

  def check(*args):
    # setup some stuff for child classes
    return self._check(*args)

If someone implements a child of InventoryEntry, they must override
self._check(*args). It is not meant to be public outside of Inventory,
but it is meant to be accessed inside the class hierarchy.

I think a bare "def _foo()" (not part of a class) would always be private.

John
=:->

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