The attached patch is for the *path.py files, the associated test suits, and the documentation-- the latter part which may need a staring at since I don't really know LaTeX very well. It's made against the HEAD in the trunk.

This is in response to issue #1462106, which has earned quite a bit of discussion on python-dev.

I am in complete agreement with the *intention* of that patch and its application, that the previous behavior was "wrong"; that splitext('.cshrc') should not return ('', '.cshrc').

However, the patch silently altered the semantics of the function instead of firmly failing, and doesn't allow for the fact that the previous documentation was ambiguous and as such people may (and apparently, sometimes did) actually consider the old behavior correct.

The attached patch adds a keyword parameter to splitext, "preserve_dotfiles", which at present defaults to False.

It might need a better name :P I suck at that.

When False, the behavior is to return ('', '.cshrc'), but also to issue a FutureWarning indicating that this will change in the future.

When True, the behavior is to return ('.cshrc', '').

The intention is to fix the 'error', while giving people time to migrate code which may have previousely been faulty to the correct result. Also, for those not of a deeply UNIX mindset, they can consider everything after the last dot-- regardless of how many-- an extension, even if it means there's no root. Viva la Windows Explorer.