# PEP 842 postmortem: how do we protect the standard library?

**URL:** <https://discuss.python.org/t/pep-842-postmortem-how-do-we-protect-the-standard-library/108575>\
**Category:** Core Development\
**Created:** [August 15, 2026, 6:56pm UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/pep-842-postmortem-how-do-we-protect-the-standard-library/108575 "2026-08-15T18:56:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 44

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**Author:** ![danielhollas](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/danielhollas/32/8233_2.png) [@danielhollas](https://discuss.python.org/u/danielhollas)\
**Post date:** [August 21, 2026, 4:34pm UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/pep-842-postmortem-how-do-we-protect-the-standard-library/108575/44 "2026-08-21T16:34:20Z")

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Possibly relevant to this discussion; PyREPL’s tab completion currently does not respect the ` __all__ ` attributes. Should it?

> <https://github.com/python/cpython/issues/149167>
>
> \# Feature or enhancement
> 
> \### Proposal:
> 
> 
> When using autocomplete in the REPL, \`…from x import \<tab\>\` will show all non-underscore prefixed members. This is a \`dir-like\` behavior that is useful to inspect and understand what can be imported. 
> 
> However, this mechanism isn't filtering on \`\_\_all\_\_\` of the module and can yield a long list of non-useful candidates to autocomplete. Two examples shown below, \`pathlib\` and \`collections.abc\`.
> 
> The feature request is that when a user enters \`from x import \<tab\>\` only the candidates defined in \`\_\_all\_\_\` are listed. 
> 
> \<img width="1280" height="920" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/3465f558-db78-413a-9732-05006d1c6c16" /\>
> 
> \<img width="1280" height="920" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/d389fe97-e303-4e68-be25-5a4e0b532df5" /\>
> 
> 
> \### Has this already been discussed elsewhere?
> 
> No response given
> 
> \### Links to previous discussion of this feature:
> 
> \_No response\_
> 
> 
> \### Linked PRs
> \* gh-156146

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