PEP 322: Reverse Iteration (second revision, please comment)

[Raymond Hettinger]

[Raymond]
> > * the sample implementation now clearly shows a check for a custom
> >   reverse method and a guard against being applied to a mapping.

[Paul Moore]
> I stumbled over this, as using the existence of has_key to reject
> mappings seemed odd. Surely even without this check, the sample
> implementation would fail on a mapping, with a KeyError at the yield?

Without a guard for mappings, the following would behave strangely:

    d = {0:'zero', 1:'one', 3:'three'}

Peter Otten pointed-out that some user defined mappings have
__contains__ rather than has_key, so the existence of a "keys"
may make a better check.



> > * added sample output for enumerate.__reversed__ to show
> >   how a custom reverse method would work
>
> Are you proposing to add such a custom reverse method to enumerate?

Yes, that has been requested more than once.
However, it was listed in the PEP mainly to give a clear example
of how a custom reverse could work.


> > * explained why the function is proposed as a builtin and why attachment
> >    to another module or type object is not being considered further.
>
> This was very useful. It may not convince everyone, but it helped me
> see your point of view a little better.

Thanks.


> > Also, please take a look at the revrange() alternative to see if you
> > prefer it or not.
>
> Not really. It feels too much like a special case.
>
> Overall, I'm +0 going on +1 (the main reason I'm not +1 is the fact
> that I have no code that would actually *use* this feature at
> present...)

Noted.

Raymond