pop() clarification

[Carl Banks]

On Apr 11, 3:10 pm, "7stud" <bbxx789_0... at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Apr 11, 10:44 am, "Scott" <s_brosci... at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > As said before I'm new to programming, and I need in depth explaination to
> > understand everything the way I want to know it, call it a personality quirk
> > ;p.
>
> > With pop() you remove the last element of a list and return its value:
>
> > Now I know list is a bad name, but for the sake of arguement lets assume its
> > not a built in sequence>
>
> > >>>list = ['this', 'is', 'an', 'example']
> > >>>list.pop()
> > 'example'
> > >>>list
>
> > ['this', 'is', 'an']
>
> > I understand all that.  What I don't understand is why all the documentation
> > I see says, "When removing a specific element from a list using pop() it
> > must be in this format: list.pop([i]).
> > At first I took that to mean that list.pop(i) would return some type of
> > error, but it doesn't.
>
> It's understandable that the definition of pop() is confusing in that
> way.  It looks like the argument should be a list.  As others have
> said, that is not what the brackets mean when the documents show the
> formal definition of a function.

I wonder if the documentation could take advantage of Python 3000
annotation syntax.  So

pop([x])

would be replaced in the docs by

pop(x: OPTIONAL)

Just a thought, probably not a good one.  The brackets are so
pervasive that it's probably better to just let newbies be confused
for a little bit.


Carl Banks