Iteration over strings

Steve Holden steve at holdenweb.com
Tue Jul 31 21:44:28 EDT 2007


Jay Loden wrote:
[...]
> This isn't just a problem with the socket module, so please don't think I'm picking on it or singling it out, it's something I've seen a number of places. e.g. from os.stat: 
> 
> os.stat = stat(...)
>     stat(path) -> stat result
>     
>     Perform a stat system call on the given path.
> 
> Ok...and what is the return value? a list? tuple? string? some type of stat object? dictionary? The only way to find out is to read the os module's source code or try it to find out. If you were really lucky you might find the related documentation from class statvfs_result and put two and two together to figure it out.
> 
In this particular case the documentation is quite explicit about the 
return value and the documentation for the function runs to almost 400 
words. Do you expect *everything* to be in the source? That isn't 
practical, as documenting everything twice like that makes twice the 
work when the function changes and the documentation has to be rewritten.

> One of the items on my very long TODO list is to submit bug reports for items like the above but it's a long list and I just haven't gotten there yet ;)
> 
All such work will earn the gratitude of the developers.

regards
  Steve
-- 
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