[Python-Dev] sum(...) limitation

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sat, Aug 02, 2014 at 10:52:07AM -0400, Alexander Belopolsky wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 2, 2014 at 3:39 AM, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:
> 
> > String concatenation with + is an attractive
> > nuisance for many people, including some who actually know better but
> > nevertheless do it. Also, for reasons I don't understand, many people
> > dislike or cannot remember to use ''.join.
> >
> 
> Since sum() already treats strings as a special case, why can't it simply
> call (an equivalent of) ''.join itself instead of telling the user to do
> it?  It does not matter why "many people dislike or cannot remember to use
> ''.join" - if this is a fact - it should be considered by language
> implementors.

It could, of course, but there is virtue in keeping sum simple, 
rather than special-casing who knows how many different types. If sum() 
tries to handle strings, should it do the same for lists? bytearrays? 
array.array? tuple? Where do we stop?

Ultimately it comes down to personal taste. Some people are going to 
wish sum() tried harder to do the clever thing with more types, some 
people are going to wish it was simpler and didn't try to be clever at 
all.

Another argument against excessive cleverness is that it ties sum() to 
one particular idiom or implementation. Today, the idiomatic and 
efficient way to concatenate a lot of strings is with ''.join, but 
tomorrow there might be a new str.concat() method. Who knows? sum() 
shouldn't have to care about these details, since they are secondary to 
sum()'s purpose, which is to add numbers. Anything else is a 
bonus (or perhaps a nuisance).

So, I would argue that when faced with something that is not a number, 
there are two reasonable approaches for sum() to take:

- refuse to handle the type at all; or
- fall back on simple-minded repeated addition.


By the way, I think this whole argument would have been easily 
side-stepped if + was only used for addition, and & used for 
concatenation. Then there would be no question about what sum() should 
do for lists and tuples and strings: raise TypeError.



-- 
Steven