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Python Warts

Python "warts" are things for which people have criticised Python, typically aspects of the language or mechanisms of its implementation, because such aspects either expose certain surprising inconsistencies, are regarded as omissions, or cause irritation for parts of the community in some sense. One goal of Python 3000 was to fix inconsistencies which could not have been fixed earlier due to the backwards compatibility constraints imposed on earlier releases of Python. This page summarises the unfixed warts, pitfalls and "gotchas" (which are not mere observations) from the following resources and lists Python 3000 remedies, if any:

• Andrew Kuchling's "Python Warts" - now archived

• Hans Nowak's "10 Python pitfalls" - now archived

• Steven Ferg's "Python Gotchas" - now archived

• Mark Lutz's "When Pythons Attack" - Archive

• David Mertz's "Python elegance and warts", Part 1 and Part 2 - now archived

In the table below, the following terminology is used:

• No remedy: while some believe this to be a shortcoming, a lack of wider consensus has resulted in no remedy being pursued

• Rejected: the shortcoming in question is regarded as a feature, typically because any attempt to remove it would arguably change the language in a way which would be even more confusing - see PEP 3099 for a list of such requested features

Note that the "What's New in Python 3.0" document also contains a list of changes in Python 3000. One can argue that many of the changes are useful fixes that were too mundane for people to write critiques about.