No 1.6! (was Re: A REALLY COOL PYTHON FEATURE:)

[Martijn Faassen]

François Pinard <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
> "Magnus Lie Hetland" <mlh at idi.ntnu.no> writes:

>> This is indeed a bit strange IMO... If I were to join the elements of a
>> list I would rather ask the list to do it than some string... I.e.

>>    ['foo', 'bar', 'baz'].join(', ')

I agree that doing ' '.join(['foo', 'bar', 'baz'] is odd. I'd also agree
that the list syntax looks more readable, though it's more special case.

The core of the problem may be that we simply don't feel that we're
doing a join() on the join character. In daily life we we say:

  I sit on the chair

In Python this would be:

  chair.sit() 

Similarly:

  I append to the list

  list.append()

I.e. the method is the verb, and the noun is the object.

If we have arguments, it works like this:

  I quickly sit on the chair

  chair.sit(speed='quickly')

  I append foo to the list

  list.append('foo')

  I draw on a paper with a blue color

  paper.draw(color='blue')

In the case of 'foo'.join() this stops making sense:

  I join the list of strings with spaces.

  ' '.join(list)

In this case, it feels obvious to us that the *list* is the big target,
and the space is what we're joining with. We don't think:

  I join the join character with a list.

Of course there are ways to rewrite it so it makes more sense. Just like:

  I draw with a blue pen

can be expressed thusly:

  pen = Pen(color="blue")
  pen.draw()

You can say something like:

  I do the joining with the space join character. 

  join_char = " "
  join_char.join()

But here I omit the list. Once the list comes into the picture, the
list *still* feels like the most important thing. So the pen example and
the join character example are not exactly equivalent.

lots-of-instinctive-language-analysis-ly yours,

Martijn
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