Hard to believe (was Re: [Python-Dev] New Features in Python 1.6)

[Peter Funk]

Hi!

Guido van Rossum on april 1st:
[...]
> With the recent release of Python 1.6 alpha 1, a lot of people have
> been wondering what's new.  This short note aims to explain the major
> changes in Python 1.6.
[...]
> Python strings can now be stored as Unicode strings.  To make it easier
> to type Unicode strings, the single-quote character defaults to creating
-------------------------------^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> a Unicode string, while the double-quote character defaults to ASCII
----^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> strings.  

As I read this my first thoughts were:
"Huh?  Is that really true?  To me this sounds like a april fools joke.
But to be careful I checked first before I read on:

pf@artcom0:ttyp4 ~/archiv/freeware/python/CVS_01_04_00/dist/src 41> ./python 
Python 1.6a1 (#2, Apr  1 2000, 19:19:18)  [GCC egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release)] on linux2
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> 'a'
'a'
>>> 'ä'
'\344'
>>> u'ä'
u'\344'

Since www.python.org happens to be down at that moment, I was unable to check,
whether my CVS tarball I downloaded from Davids starship account
was recent enough and whether this single-quote-defaults-to-unicode
has been discussed earlier before I got subscribed to python-dev.  Better
I should have read on first, before starting to wonder...
[...]
>     tokens = "foo bar baz".split(" ")
> Or, equivalently, this:
>     tokens = " ".split("foo bar baz")
> 
> (Python figures out which string is the delimiter and which is the
> string to split by examining both strings to see which one occurs more
> frequently inside the other.)

Now it becomes clearer that this *must* be an april fools joke!  ;-) : 

>>> tokens = "foo bar baz".split(" ")
>>> print tokens
['foo', 'bar', 'baz']
>>> tokens = " ".split("foo bar baz")
>>> print tokens
[' ']

[...]
> Note that use of any string method on a particular string renders it
> mutable.  
[...]
> For consistency with C and C++,
> asterisks in the function signature become ampersands in the function
> body:
[...]
> load modules via HTTP from a known URL.
[...]
> This has allowed us to drop most of the standard library from the
> distribution...
[...]
Pheeew... Oh Well.   And pigs can fly.  Sigh!  ;-)

That was a well prepared April fools joke!

Regards, Peter
-- 
Peter Funk, Oldenburger Str.86, D-27777 Ganderkesee, Germany, Fax:+49 4222950260
office: +49 421 20419-0 (ArtCom GmbH, Grazer Str.8, D-28359 Bremen)