Python 3.0 - is this true?

Roy Smith roy at panix.com
Sun Nov 9 09:25:39 EST 2008


In article <6no8p6Fm8q70U1 at mid.uni-berlin.de>,
 "Diez B. Roggisch" <deets at nospam.web.de> wrote:

> > 
> > Also, I thought that part of the python philosophy was to allow any
> > sort of object in a list, and to allow the same methods to work with
> > whatever was in list.
> 
> Not really. When the usual argument about the existence (and 
> justification) of lists & tuples comes along, one common distinction is 
> that
> 
>   - tuples contain arbitrary object of varying types, so they are kind 
> of "records"
>   - lists should contain uniform objects.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with lists of heterogenous types.  Or, for 
that matter, iterators which generate heterogeneous types.  Here's some 
perfectly reasonable examples (equally applicable to lists or iterators):

* The tokens parsed out of a file (ints, floats, identifiers, keywords, 
various kinds of punctuation, etc)

* The entries in a unix directory (plain files, directories, symlinks, 
special files, named sockets, etc)

* The vehicles going through a toll booth (cars, trucks, motorcycles)

I don't see any reason you shouldn't be able to build lists of those things.



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