itertools to iter transition (WAS: Pre-PEP: Dictionary accumulator methods)

[Ville Vainio]

>>>>> "Steven" == Steven Bethard <steven.bethard at gmail.com> writes:

    Steven> to be documented as a builtin type.  I don't find the
    Steven> argument "builtin type methods are hard to find"
    Steven> convincing -- the solution here is to fix the
    Steven> documentation, not refuse to add builtin types.

Yep - that's why we should perhaps fix the documentation first :-).

    Steven> I guess the real questions are[1]:
    Steven> * How much does iter feel like a type?

Guess this depends on the person. I've never thought of it as a
type. It's too fundamental a concept to coerce into a type, even
thought protocol == type in a sense.

    Steven> [1] There's also the question of how much you believe in
    Steven> OO tenets like "functions closely associated with a type
    Steven> should be members of that type"...

The issue that really bothers me here is bloating the builtin
space. We already have an uncomfortable amount of builtin
functions. Of course the additions that have been suggested would not
pollute the builtin namespace, but they would still be there, taking
space. I'd rather see a more modular and 'slimmer' Python, what with
the advent of Python for S60 and other embedded uses.

Perhaps what you need is 'from usefulstuff import *', with usefulstuff
having os, sys, 'itertools as it', &c.

-- 
Ville Vainio   http://tinyurl.com/2prnb