On Mon, Aug 4, 2014 at 12:12 AM, Larry Hastings <la...@hastings.org> wrote:
> > Several people have said they found the name "nullable" surprising, > suggesting I use another name like "allow_none" or "noneable". I, in turn, > find their surprise surprising; "nullable" is a term long associated with > exactly this concept. It's used in C# and SQL, and the term even has its > own Wikipedia page: > The thing is, "null" in these languages are not the same thing. If you look to the various database wrappers there's a lot of controversy about just how to map the SQL NULL to Python: simply mapping it to Python's None becomes strange because the semantics of a SQL NULL or NULL pointer and Python None don't exactly match. Not all that long ago someone was making an argument on this list to add a SQLNULL type object to better map SQL NULL semantics (regards to sorting, as I recall -- but its been awhile) Python has None. Its definition and understanding in a Python context is clear. Why introduce some other concept? In Python its very common you pass None instead of an other argument. > Before you say "the term 'nullable' will confuse end users", let me remind > you: this is not user-facing. This is a parameter for an Argument Clinic > converter, and will only ever be seen by CPython core developers. A group > which I hope is not so easily confused > Yet, my lurking observation of argument clinic is it is all about clearly defining the C-side of how things are done in Python API's. It may not confuse 'end users', but it may confuse possible contributors, and simply add a lack of clarity to the situation. Passing None in place of another argument is a very Pythonic thing to do; why confuse that by using other words which imply other semantics? None is a Python thing with clear semantics in Python; allow_none quite accurately describes the Pythonic thing described here, while 'nullable' expects for domain knowledge beyond Python and makes assumptions of semantics. /re-lurk --S
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