Equivalent in Python?

[Tim Hammerquist]

Philip Swartzleonard graced us by uttering:
> James J. Besemer || Mon 29 Apr 2002 03:11:25p:
> 
>> 
>> Vincent Foley wrote:
>> 
>>> What's the Python equivalient of Perl's "a"++; ?
>> 
>> You can't get there from here.
>> 
>> I.e. there is no practical equivalant.
>> 
>> Including it would allow deadly side-effects within an expression and
>> thus would percipitate the end of the world, or at least mankind.
>> 
>> Regards
>> 
>> --jb
> 
> But if you just want to increment something, use 'foo+=1'. Exactly the
> same, except one more character and only works on a line of it's own
> (avoiding above said doom... man pointer-walking funcitons in C are
> nuts with that... =)

Well, yes and no. The type being incremented is a string, not an
int. For example:

    # perl
    $a = 10;    $a++;
    $b = "m";   $b++;
    $c = "az";  $c++;

    print $a, "\n";     ->  11
    print $b, "\n";     ->  "n"
    print $c, "\n";     ->  "ba"

Many question the usefulness of this perl feature, but it's come in
handy many times when dealing with alphanumerics with a limited
fieldwidth (Win32 FAT16/32 filenames, to name one).

I don't believe there's a built-in equivalent in python, but it's always
possible to write it.

HTH
Tim Hammerquist
-- 
Wow, I'm being shot at from both sides.  That means I *must* be right.  :-)
    -- Larry Wall in <199710211959.MAA18990 at wall.org>