Feature or enhancement

Proposal:

The documentation can be found here. Note that it is not documented in the --help text since randomization became default in 3.3 (c9f54cf5).

This option generally does nothing [except for a special case described below]. As randomization is enabled by default since 3.3 (c9f54cf5). Currently, the option only has an effect in the case when PYTHONHASHSEED is set to a specific seed, overriding it. This is even wrongly documented (see #137608). This exception also did not work till 3.7 (358e5e17), so there were 4 versions where in all cases, the option was a NO-OP. Seeing as no user (Apart from Victor) noticed, it can be reasonably concluded that this option is not widely used.

I propose to deprecate the option for the standard period of two versions, and then convert it to a NO-OP for backwards-compatibility like the -t option.

Has this already been discussed elsewhere?

I have already discussed this feature proposal on Discourse

Links to previous discussion of this feature:

The proposal on Discourse received no objections.

Linked PRs

• gh-137897: Deprecate the -R option #137898