'in' operator

[Joshua Marshall]

Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:

> "Walter Moreira" <walterm at cmat.edu.uy> wrote in message
> news:mailman.982374799.24358.python-list at python.org...
>> Why the following test raise an error?
>>
>>   >>> '' in 'yY'
>>   Traceback (most recent call last):
>>     File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
>>   TypeError: 'in <string>' requires character as left operand

> Precisely for the reason stated.  A character is a string of length 1.  A
> null string (of length 0) is not a character.  Neither are strings of
> length >= 2 [for which one must use find() or match()].

Wouldn't it be more natural for this to be a ValueError?  There is no
character type in Python -- '', 'y', and 'yY' are all strings.