[Aahz] > > > > You won't have much luck in doing s/whrandom/random/g on a > > hard-copy Python text book and this is what Python newbies > > read. I'm not even talking about potential Python users who > > haven't gotten the slightest idea what sed is... :-) > > What Python textbooks use whrandom? A couple of weeks ago I replaced code of my own that used whrandom. And I can tell you exactly what originally lead me astray. I had found a routine in Zope similar to what I needed and it used whrandom. A check in Python Essential Reference (first edition) confirmed what I needed to know, made no mention that whrandom was deprecated, and made it appear that going directly to whrandom was a shorter path for the functions I needed. Specifically, the functions choice, randint, random and seed are all listed under whrandom, are not repeated under random, and the description under random says that "The module also exports the choice(), randint(), random(), and uniform() functions from the whrandom module." Even the more recently published "Python Standard Library" book makes no mention of whrandom being deprecated. It says "The random module provides a number of different random number generators. The whrandom module is similar, but it also allow you to create multiple generator objects." (Kind of makes whrandom sound superior, doesn't it?) The Python 2.1 Bible, however, does better. "Prior to Version 2.1, the random module used the whrandom module - which provides much of the same functionality - however, the whrandom module is now deprecated." That said, I'm not opposed to getting rid of cruft. And you'd have to be a really raw newbie not to realize that there are going to be some discrepancies between published books and current reality. --- Patrick K. O'Brien Orbtech
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