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

[Terry Reedy]

"Bryan Olson" <fakeaddress at nowhere.org> wrote in message 
news:7sJPe.573$MN5.131 at newssvr25.news.prodigy.net...
> The double-meaning of -1, as both an exclusive stopping bound
> and an alias for the highest valid index, is just plain whacked.

I agree in this sense: the use of any int as an error return is an 
unPythonic *nix-Cism, which I believe was copied therefrom.  Str.find is 
redundant with the Pythonic exception-raising str.index and I think it 
should be removed in Py3.

Therefore, I think changing it now is untimely and changing the language 
because of it backwards.

Terry J. Reedy