Clarification requested for library/syslog.rst

[Gaasmann]

Hello,
While translating library/syslog.rst we've realized that the comment "Changed in 3.2" for syslog.openlog() seems ambiguous:
https://docs.python.org/3/library/syslog.html#syslog.openlog

In previous versions, keyword arguments were not allowed, and ident was
required. The default for ident was dependent on the system libraries,
and often was python instead of the name of the Python program file.

As ident was required before 3.2, it couldn't have a default value, so the sentence seems contradictory.
The documentation for 3.1 shows that ident is mandatory and the tests on the 3.1.5 distribution always define ident when calling openlog().

Could someone help us understand the meaning of this sentence?

Thanks

[hauntsaninja]

I think this makes a little bit more sense in the context of the 3.1 docs (https://docs.python.org/3.1/library/syslog.html#syslog.openlog ):

Logging options other than the defaults can be set by explicitly opening the log file with openlog() prior to calling syslog(). The defaults are (usually) ident = 'syslog', logopt = 0, facility = LOG_USER.

So the defaults are what you get when you use syslog without openlog. But take it with a grain of salt, I don't really understand the code, in particular, I don't understand the claim in 3.1's docs that ident usually equalled syslog

Some more links:
13daf12
https://bugs.python.org/issue8451
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2010-March/098500.html

[Gaasmann]

Yes, that sounds right. Like you, I don't get the claim you mentioned.

From what I see,

• before the patch syslog.openlog fails and the C's openlog isn't called
• after the patch C's openlog is called with ident = NULL.

In both cases, it seems the decision for what to use for ident is up to the syslog implementation (the man page on Debian says that POSIX.1-2008 does not specify the behavior when ident is NULL.)

So, most of the time, it seems that syslog uses C's basename(argv[0]) but maybe some systems would behave differently and use syslog for ident?

In any case, even with the patch, it seems that the syslog implementation would decide the ident's value if sys.argv[0] == ''

If what I said above is right, I would remove the second line of the "Changed in 3.2" as it could still be true:

The default for ident was dependent on the system libraries, and often was python instead of the name of the Python program file.