Little problem with the "+" operator

[Joshua Marshall]

Steve Purcell <stephen_purcell at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Zamurai wrote:
>> variableOne = 500
>> myVariable = variableOne + "cool"
>> 
>> But I get the following error: "unsupported operand types for +"
>> 
>> Does someone know how to solve the problem?

> You can't add variables of different types together in Python and expect them
> to magically agree on a sensible result.

> So, you have to explicitly say:

>>>> variableOne = 500
>>>> myVariable = str(variableOne) + "cool"
>>>> myVariable 
> '500cool'
>>>> 

> Or,

>>>> variableOne = 500
>>>> myVariable = variableOne + int("cool")
> Traceback (innermost last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> ValueError: invalid literal for int(): cool
>>>> 


> This is infinitely more sane than:

> % perl -e 'print 500 + "cool"'
> 500

Comparing Python to Perl here doesn't seem very fair.  They're very
different languages.  In general, I'm surprised by the urgency with
which people often jump to compare them.