[Python-Dev] A house upon the sand

[Christian Tismer]

Barry Scott wrote:
> 
> I fully support Greg Wards view. If string was removed I'd not
> update the old code but add in my own string module.
> 
> Given the effort you guys went to to keep the C extension protocol the
> same (in the context of crashing on importing a 1.5 dll into 2.0) I
> amazed you think that string could be removed...
> 
> Could you split the lib into blessed and backward compatibility sections?
> Then by some suitable mechanism I can choose the compatibility I need?
> 
> Oh and as for join obviously a method of a list...
> 
>         ['thats','better'].join(' ')

The above is the way as it is defined for JavaScript. But in
JavaScript, the list join method performs an implicit str()
on the list elements.
As has been discussed some time ago, Python's lists are
too versatile to justify a string-centric method.

Marc André pointed out that one could do a reduction with the
semantics of the "+" operator, but Guido said that he wouldn't
like to see

      [2, 3, 5].join(7)

being reduced to 2+7+3+7+5 == 24.
That could only be avoided if there were a way to distinguish
numeric addition from concatenation.

but-I-could-live-with-it - ly y'rs - chris

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