Re: OT: Python 3 conversion

Matthias Andree <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> The string vs. bytes vs. Unicode matter is still needed, so reviewing
> and checking if you need .decode() or .encode(), or class/exception
> updates are required

Yes, this is a big part of it.  Just arbitrarily throwing away the "u" prefix
on string literals and changing to bytes where the prefix wasn't used doesn't
get you very far.  It requires knowledge of the codebase and what it's doing.

> , and sometimes I found it necessary to convert some method outputs to
> list()s explicitly ("for i in list(former_result):")

I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds this change in Python 3 a bit
annoying.

> For fetchmailconf, it wasn't a very clean conversion, but interspersed
> with fixes for bugs also present under Python 2.x, so it's probably not
> the prime example on how to do a conversion... but it is doable.

A barebones conversion is doable, but it gets worse as the codebase grows
larger or more complex.  For getmail, it's a significant chunk of work that I
think is better invested in a rewrite that cleans up a ton of stuff from early
Python 2, and even Python 1.5, that I had to monkeypatch in or implement
myself because it simply didn't exist in the ecosystem at the time.

Charles
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Charles Cazabon
GPL'ed software available at:               http://pyropus.ca/software/
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