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

[Torsten Bronger]

Hallöchen!

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at udel.edu> writes:

> "Paul Rubin" <"http://phr.cx"@NOSPAM.invalid> wrote in message 
> news:7xmzn41ofc.fsf at ruckus.brouhaha.com...
>
>> "Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at udel.edu> writes:
>>
>>> Str.find is redundant with the Pythonic exception-raising
>>> str.index and I think it should be removed in Py3.
>>
>> I like having it available so you don't have to clutter your code
>> with try/except if the substring isn't there.  But it should not
>> return a valid integer index.
>
> The try/except pattern is a pretty basic part of Python's design.
> One could say the same about clutter for *every* function or
> method that raises an exception on invalid input.  Should more or
> even all be duplicated?  Why just this one?

Granted, try/except can be used for deliberate case discrimination
(which may even happen in the standard library in many places),
however, it is only the second most elegant method -- the most
elegant being "if".  Where "if" does the job, it should be prefered
in my opinion.

Tschö,
Torsten.

-- 
Torsten Bronger, aquisgrana, europa vetus            ICQ 264-296-646