terminological obscurity

[Donn Cave]

In article <40BD0564.5090002 at v.loewis.de>,
 "Martin v. Lowis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:

> Arthur wrote:
> > "Is green" doesn't help us if the list does not cohere around the
> > concept of color.
> 
> Correct. Any kind of predicate involving functions requires that
> a certain base domain is used on which these functions are total.
> 
> > And the above sentences implies, and I could independently imagine, a
> > list might cohere around nothing more then the concept of existence.
> 
> Correct. Of course, people typically collect things in a collection to
> have algorithms operate on the elements of a collection, so a collection
> of all things that exist would not be useful, and would be difficult to
> create.

But if you could, it would certainly be a list!  I think
you would have to invent a `lazy' implementation, and
of course it doesn't make sense to think of a tuple whose
size isn't comprehended at the time of instantiation.
On the other hand, the collection of all things that ever
have existed or will, might be a tuple ... hm.

Anyway, take

   sequence = dict.keys()

To me, all this expresses is, keys that exist in that
dictionary container.  To the extent they inherently
conform to any predicate, it isn't a very interesting
one (OK, they're immutable.)

   Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu