On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 12:12 PM, Alexander Belopolsky
<report@bugs.python.org> wrote:
>
> Alexander Belopolsky <belopolsky@users.sourceforge.net> added the comment:
>
> On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 11:45 AM, Russ Cox <report@bugs.python.org> wrote:
> ..
>>  My argument is only that Python should behave the same in
>>  this respect as other systems that use substantially the same
>>  regular expressions.
>>
>
> This is not enough to justify the change in my view.  After all, "A
> Foolish Consistency is the Hobgoblin of Little Minds"
> <http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/>.
>
> I don't know if there is much code out there that relies on the
> current behavior, but technically speaking, this is an incompatible
> change.  A backward compatible way to add your desired functionality
> would be to add the "escape_special" function, but not every useful
> 3-line function belongs to stdlib.

In my mind, arguing that re.escape can't possibly be changed
due to imagined backward incompatibilities is the foolish consistency.

> This said, I would prefer simply adding '_' to _alphanum over _special
> approach, but still -1 on the whole idea.

I don't use Python enough to care one way or the other.
I noticed a bug, I reported it.  Y'all are welcome to do
as you see fit.

Russ