Why not just show the out-of-range index?

["Martin v. Löwis"]

rurpy at yahoo.com schrieb:
>>> Rather, they (like I) will encourage to OP to submit
>>> a patch that fixes the problem.
>> Now, that would be rather silly. I would have to familiarize
>> myself with the code for the Python interpreter,
> 
> Seems to me he called the suggestion (made without any
> knowlage of the OP's abilities regarding C and Python's
> internals) that he summit a patch, silly.
> 
> I aggree.
> 
> His response was well within the bounds of normal
> usenet discourse.

Maybe I'm unusually picky, but I also feel insulted if
my suggestions are called silly - this is just like calling
myself silly. I rarely make silly suggestions deliberately
(and try to mark them as ironic in usenet if I do); so if
somebody puts them down as "silly", I'll feel insulted.

I personally don't think it is silly to suggest that an
IT professional becomes familiar with the implementation
of the Python interpreter. That code is well-written,
well-documented, so it should be feasible (rather than
being silly) for anybody with a programming background
and sufficient determination to familiarize with that code.

I take the same position for about any open-source software:
you *can* get into Apache, Mozilla, the Linux kernel,
and now the Java virtual machine if you want to. If you
don't, it's not because you can't, but because you don't
want to.

It would be unrealistic (but not silly) to suggest that
if the source code weren't available at all. It is *not*
silly to suggest that people should make efforts to
contribute to open source software.

Regards,
Martin