Jython bugs or features?

[Jeff Shannon]

Dinu Gherman wrote:


> I'm pretty surprised! I knew the Python test suite is *very* far
> from complete, but list() is an *extremely* crucial function,
> isn't it?

Not in my (admittedly somewhat limited) experience, at least not in the way that
you're using it.  I've used list() to convert strings or tuples to lists; I've
never used it to copy a list, and it wouldn't have even occurred to me that it
*should* copy a list.  (What's the result of int(5)? Why would you use it?  Same
idea.)  Looking at the docs, I suppose that it *is* documented behavior, but
it's still somewhat obscure.  If I want a copy, I'll ask for a copy (using
either copy.copy() or full-slice notation [:]); if I'm using list(), it's
because I want to convert some non-list sequence to a list.  So, I don't find it
at all surprising that nobody would have noticed this bug in Jython before.

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International