all possible combinations

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thu, 28 Jul 2005 12:30:23 +0100, Steve Holden wrote:

>> This makes me wonder why we still don't have something like the unint
>> function above in the standard distribution.
>> 
> Because it's not what you'd call (or, at least, it's not what I'd call) 
> universally required. As you have shown it is relatively easy to hack 
> something supp when it's needed, so since it isn't something that's 
> required by the majority it hasn't been added to the library.

Have you looked at what's in the standard Python library?

aifc.py => Stuff to parse AIFF-C and AIFF files.
imghdr.py => Recognize image file formats based on their first few bytes.
gopher.py => Gopher protocol client interface.
token.py => Token constants (from "token.h").

I'm sure they are useful to somebody, but do you really think that the
majority of Python users need to parse AIFF files?

Converting base-19 strings into integers is a rather niche need, but if
somebody bothered to write, document and provide unittests for such a
module, I'm sure it could be added to the standard library. It isn't as if
there is any policy of prohibiting specialist modules just because they
don't have universal need.

And no, I'm not volunteering. I may, if I get an itch, but at this moment
in my life I'm not that fussed one way or another.



-- 
Steven.