Bug in string.find; was: Re: Proposed PEP: New style indexing,was Re: Bug in slice type

[Bengt Richter]

On 31 Aug 2005 07:26:48 GMT, Antoon Pardon <apardon at forel.vub.ac.be> wrote:

>Op 2005-08-30, Bengt Richter schreef <bokr at oz.net>:
>> On 30 Aug 2005 10:07:06 GMT, Antoon Pardon <apardon at forel.vub.ac.be> wrote:
>>
>>>Op 2005-08-30, Terry Reedy schreef <tjreedy at udel.edu>:
>>>>
>>>> "Paul Rubin" <"http://phr.cx"@NOSPAM.invalid> wrote in message 
>>>> news:7xy86k3r7n.fsf at ruckus.brouhaha.com...
>>>>
>>>>> Really it's x[-1]'s behavior that should go, not find/rfind.
>>>>
>>>> I complete disagree, x[-1] as an abbreviation of x[len(x)-1] is extremely 
>>>> useful, especially when 'x' is an expression instead of a name.
>>>
>>>I don't think the ability to easily index sequences from the right is
>>>in dispute. Just the fact that negative numbers on their own provide
>>>this functionality.
>>>
>>>Because I sometimes find it usefull to have a sequence start and
>>>end at arbitrary indexes, I have written a table class. So I
>>>can have a table that is indexed from e.g. -4 to +6. So how am
>>>I supposed to easily get at that last value?
>> Give it a handy property? E.g.,
>>
>>     table.as_python_list[-1]
>
>Your missing the point, I probably didn't make it clear.
>
>It is not about the possibilty of doing such a thing. It is
>about python providing a frame for such things that work
>in general without the need of extra properties in 'special'
>cases.
>
How about interpreting seq[i] as an abbreviation of seq[i%len(seq)] ?
That would give a consitent interpretation of seq[-1] and no errors
for any value ;-)

Regards,
Bengt Richter