Implicit lists

[Erik Max Francis]

Christian Tismer wrote:

> You are right, in general. The problem is simply that
> strings can be treated as objects or sequences all
> the time, and that a common error is to pass a string
> in a sequence context, and your function iterates over
> the single chars. This especially hurts when your
> function expects a list of filenames, and suddenly it
> creates a bunch of single char named files :-)

I don't see how you can eliminate strings' sequence interface without
either 1. breaking a huge amount of code, or 2. ending up with a string
presenting a very mixed and fragmented interface.  Individual characters
are routinely indexed from strings, the lengths of strings (via len) are
routinely retrieved, and slicing (really a special case of the sequence
protocol) is exceptionally common.

So how do you make the string type support all these behaviors but _not_
act as a standard sequence?  Why would you really want to?

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