python flake8 ignore E501 and max-line-length

Question

what is the purpose of using both

[flake8]
ignore = E501
max-line-length = 120 

i have seen lot of codebases following this format in setup.cfg file but my question is if you ignore E501 then you code accepts any number of characters per line in a module, again why they are using max-line-length?

Answer 1

I believe this is because the default characters per line is 82, so they ignore that so it can exceed that number, but then set a larger limit (120 in your case)

Answer 2

It would be enough to have only max-line-length. Default is 79.

In setup.cfg

[flake8]
max-line-length = 88

• No lint error here when having lines longer than 79 (and <=88), i.e. setting the max-line-length overwrites ignore = E501
• 88 is the default length of black formatter.