I changed the title because I believe a) the Python-level tuple of ints should be created on demand (I am not sure what the patch does); and b) the exposure should be done by an overt function rather than be an  'attribute', even if that is a front for a property getter.  The former would have to come with re.  A function does not need to be a method, and can therefore be provided in a 3rd party module that accesses the C attribute via ctypes.  Such a function could be used with past versions of CPython.

Jelle, I suggest that you augment regdis with such function, so it does not depend on this issue.


I am closing this for reasons stated and the following.

I reread the thread.  Only one person with commit privileges participated.  The proposal got only tepid support for stdlib inclusion and at least as much or more support for 3rd party activity.  The thread ended with Jonathan saying "I've decided to shelve this idea for the time being".  Given the opposition of the current re maintainer, this proposal lacks sufficient support.

Modules as a whole can be OS specific (several examples) or CPython-specific (dis).  We generally avoid adding features within modules whose existence is implementation-specific.  "This attribute [a tuple of ints] is not guaranteed to exist in all implementations of Python." is almost enough to kill the proposal.