On Jan 23, 2016, at 03:38 AM, Scott Kitterman wrote: >Personally I seriously dislike the trend to call Python Python 2 (and I still >thing approving a pep to invent /usr/bin/python2 because Arch went insane was >a horrible idea). There's an earlier spot in the document where it says that >everything refers to python and python3 unless it's explicit. I'll make this >spot /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages and any risk of ambiguity is, I think, >resolved. I'll leave it to you, but my take on it is that "Python" is the generic term for the language and its specification. "Python 2" v "Python 3" provides disambiguation when you're talking about specific major versions of the language. "Python 3.5" and such usually describe specific releases of the CPython interpreter implementation (note how "CPython" is used to disambiguate between alternative implementations of the language specification). Finally, python2.7, python3.4 and such are used to describe the executables that provide the versions (e.g. mentally prepend them with /usr/bin). All of this, except the last point perhaps, is orthogonal to the /usr/bin/python2 issue you mention. Back to the original point, to me saying "Python" and "Python 3" is confusing or misleading, given the above definitions. It's confusing because "Python 3" *is* Python, so what's the difference? It's misleading because it implies that somehow "Python 3" isn't "Python". >> B.2. dh_python2 and dh_python3 >> >> Again, I think here you want to say "Python2 and Python3" to disambiguate >> between generic Python. > >If I say Python and Python3, what version can the one that's not Python3 >possibly be? I don't think it's any less confusing than starting to call >what we've always called "Python" "Python 2". See above, but to rephrase, "Python" is ambiguous in this context because you could be talking about Python-the-language, not Python-some-release-version. Cheers, -Barry
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