str vs dict API size (was 'Re: left padding zeroes on a string...')

[Robert Kern]

George Sakkis wrote:
> "Larry Bates" <lbates at syscononline.com> wrote in message news:YOKdnQbt1qRGAdnfRVn-tg at comcast.com...
> 
>>Once it is in everyone is hesitant to take it out for fear of
>>breaking someone's code that uses it (no matter how obscure).
>>Putting in new methods should be difficult and require lots
>>of review for that reason and so we don't have language bloat.
>>
>>Larry Bates
> 
> 
> Language bloat is subjective of course, but I fail to see why putting in dict.reset and dict.add
> should be harder than, say, str.swapcase or str.capitalize.

Those were functions in the string module for, well much longer than I 
can remember. When string methods were innovated, they became methods 
along with the rest of the string module functions.

Adding functions was easier back then; the standard library was rather 
smaller. There is no reason that the criteria for inclusion now must be 
the same as then and plenty of good reasons for them to be more 
restrictive now.

-- 
Robert Kern
rkern at ucsd.edu

"In the fields of hell where the grass grows high
  Are the graves of dreams allowed to die."
   -- Richard Harter