[Python-3000] Droping find/rfind?

[Georg Brandl]

Tim Peters wrote:
> [Guido van Rossum]
>> At today's sprint, one of the volunteers completed a patch to rip out
>> find() and rfind(), replacing all calls with index()/rindex(). But now
>> I'm getting cold feet -- is this really a good idea? (It's been listed
>> in PEP 3100 for a long time, but I haven't thought about it much,
>> really.)
>>
>> What do people think?
> 
> I'd rather toss index/rindex myself, although I understand that
> [r]find's -1 return value for "not found" can trip up newbies.  Like I
> care ;-)

Perhaps a search() method, like Josiah proposed, makes sense.

> If you decide to toss [r]find anyway, I'd rather see "not found" be
> spelled with an exception more specific than ValueError (who knows
> what all "except ValueError:" is going to catch?  /Just/ that the
> substring wasn't found?  Ya, that's something to bet your life on
> ;-)).

Seriously, this is something I have thought of from time to time:
an exceptions' "source", so that you could say

try:
     x = int(some expression)
except ValueError from int:
     do something

Obviously, it's too much work to add such a thing though.

Georg