[Python-Dev] copy, len and the like as 'object' methods?

[James_Althoff@i2.com]

Tim Peters wrote:
>Say what?!  What kind of stupid-ass language spells the len() function as
if
>it were a method?  That's carrying consistency to an irrational extreme --

Well, only those stupid-ass, irrational, and extremist languages that
include classes and methods as an integral and uniform part of the language
from the very beginning, I guess.

The "stupid-ass, irrational, extremist" side is merely saying that

mylist.append(x)
mylist.length()
mylist.extend(y)
mylist.length()

is more sensible (easier for new-to-python programmers to discover, more
consistent, more mainstream)

than

mylist.append(x)
len(mylist)
mylist.extend(y)
len(mylist)

and that len(mylist) as syntactic sugar for mylist.__len__() is sugar that
adds no value compared to just doing the straightforward thing of writing
mylist.length() or mylist.len().

But you all clearly like spelling it len(mylist) and it's already there, so
... whatever.

Jim