bpo-42958: Align docstring and filecmp.cmp() for shallow compare by AlexVndnblcke · Pull Request #24246 · python/cpython
The docstring for filecmp mentions that, with a shallow copy, the signature of the file is compared rather than a bit-by-bit comparison. As external user it is not clear what is meant by this signature. Is it a comparison of a stat between 2 files? If so, what about inode which would only be identical for a hard link. And so on... This clarification describes which parts of a stat are compared to give the end user more info when to use shallow compares and when not to.
State the actual interpretation of the `shallow` keyword argument to minimize possible confusion for the end user. This include: - clarify which info of `os.stat()` is used during shallow compare (file type, size and modification time) - clarify that `shallow=True` doesn't imply no deep compare can be performed under the hood.
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