join()

[Thomas Wouters]

On Mon, Oct 09, 2000 at 03:07:43PM +1300, Greg Ewing wrote:
> echuck at mindspring.com wrote:

> > In Python 2.0, I was surprised to see join() had become a method of
> > string. I "naturally" expected it to be a method of list.

> Quite a lot of people screamed blue murder about
> this at the time, and were ignored. Getting it
> changed now seems to be impossible.

Now now, that's not very nice. I'm certain I saw a lot of responses to the
threads about "".join() that tried to explain the choice. I can imagine that
some postings were 'ignored', given the sheer volume, but it's not like
*all* complaints were ignored. This isn't something that was thought up by
one person and just accepted by all the other developers. And don't forget
that Guido is Guido. Not the fact that string methods, including join(),
were in the 1.6 release means it's impossible to remove them, but the fact
that Guido allowed it in in the first place, despite the violent arguments
about how improper it is ;)

I know, I tried to get 'for x in y indexing z:' and similar patches
accepted, and failed ;) Also less syntax-heavy changes, like allowing any
assignment expression in 'import-as' (so that you can say 'import sys as
x['sys']' and 'import os as mymod.os' and such), were rejected. The fact
that string methods were accepted means they were pondered, inspected,
discussed (if necessary) and scrutinized before that, even if only in
Guido's mind.

I-wonder-what-kind-of-discussions-Guido-has-in-his-mind-ly y'rs,
-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

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