tuple.index(item)

Peter Hansen peter at engcorp.com
Mon Jul 11 23:41:06 EDT 2005


David Isaac wrote:
> Why don't tuples support an index method?
> It seems natural enough ...

This question has been posed several (many?) times in the past.  See the 
archives for more detail, but basically the answer that is usually given 
is this:

Tuples are intended to be used somewhat like C "structs", or Pascal 
"records", which is to say they should contain heterogeneous sequences 
of information for which the concept of ".index()" is fairly 
meaningless.  They are _not_ generally intended to be used as "read-only 
lists", and that's basically why .index() wasn't defined for them.

Another answer that probably follows close on the heels of that one is 
along the lines of "patches are always welcome", but I honestly don't 
know if a patch to add this would be accepted.  Probably checking 
Sourceforge for past patches would give an answer, since it seems likely 
someone has already tried.

-Peter



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