[Python-Dev] breaking list.append()

[Fredrik Lundh]

Tim Peters wrote:
> The "Subscriptions" section of the Reference Manual explicitly allows =
for
>=20
>     dict[a, b, c]
>=20
> and explicitly does not allow for
>=20
>     sequence[a, b, c]

I'd thought we'd agreed that nobody reads the
reference manual ;-)

> What would you like to do, then?

more time to fix it, perhaps?  it's surely a minor
code change, but fixing it can be harder than
you think (just witness Gerrit's bogus patches)

after all, python might be free, but more and more
people are investing lots of money in using it [1].

> The code will be at least as broken a year
> from now, and probably more so -- unless you fix it.=20

sure.  we've already started.  but it's a lot of work,
and it's quite likely that it will take a while until we
can be 100% confident that all the changes are pro-
perly done.

(not all software have a 100% complete test suite that
simply says "yes, this works" or "no, it doesn't")

</F>

1) fwiw, some poor soul over here posted a short note
to the pythonworks mailing, mentioning that we've now
fixed the price.  a major flamewar erupted, and my mail-
box is now full of mail from unknowns telling me that I
must be a complete moron that doesn't understand that
Python is just a toy system, which everyone uses just be-
cause they cannot afford anything better...