[Python-checkins] CVS: python/dist/src/Lib string.py,1.46,1.47

[Fredrik Lundh]

Greg Ewing <greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> Whatever you do, don't stuff it onto some arbitrary
> type just for the sake of making it a method.

excuse me?  it's not an "arbitrary" type -- it's the
type of the separator string.  makes perfect sense,
once you've learned to think like Tim...

> the world will not end if there are some non-method
> functions left in Python 1.6...

do you mean something like this?

    def join(sequence, sep=" "):
        if not sequence:
            return sep[:0]
        res = sequence[0][:0]
        for w in sequence:
            res = res + (sep + w)
        return res[len(sep):]

or maybe, to get decent performance out of it:

    def join(sequence, separator=" "):
        if type(separator) is StringType:
            ... do it this way ...
        elif type(separator) is UnicodeType:
            ... or do it that way ...
        # remember to add more code here
        # if we add more string types
        else:
            raise TypeError

or maybe, a bit more object oriented:

    def join(sequence, separator=" "):
        return separator.join(sequence)

now, the last one wasn't too bad, was it?

(if you liked that, have you looked in the
CVS repository lately? ;-)

</F>