PEP8 clearly specifies 79 characters, however, PyCharm defaults to 120 and gives me the warning "PEP8: line too long (... > 120 characters)".
Did previous versions of PEP8 use 120 and PyCharm not update its PEP8 checker? I couldn't find any previous versions of the PEP8 Guide, however, I can easily find previous version of the PEP8 Python scripts.
I'm starting a new Python project and I'm not sure which to use.
References:
PyCharm is built on top of IntelliJ. IntelliJ has a default line length of 120 characters.
This is probably because you can't fit a common Java name like: @annotated public static MyObjectFactoryFactory enterpriseObjectFactoryFactoryBuilderPattern { in a mere 80 character line. (I'm poking fun, but Java names do tend to be longer by convention).
The pep8 checker is configurable, so you can specify a better max line length - like 79 characters.
The error is misleading because the pep8 checker formats the text with something like "PEP8: line too long(... > %s characters)" % max_line_setting. So it's using the pep8 checker, with a specific configuration, not claiming that pep8 specifies a 120 character line.