len() should always return something

[Piet van Oostrum]

>>>>> "Rhodri James" <rhodri at wildebst.demon.co.uk> (RJ) wrote:

>RJ> On Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:57:02 +0100, Grant Edwards <invalid at invalid> wrote:
>>> On 2009-07-24, Dr. Phillip M. Feldman <pfeldman at verizon.net> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Some aspects of the Python design are remarkably clever, while
>>>> others leave me perplexed. Here's an example of the latter:
>>>> Why does len() give an error when applied to an int or float?
>>>> len() should always return something; in particular, when
>>>> applied to a scalar, it should return a value of 1.
>>> 
>>> If len(7) returned a value of 1, then wouldn't one expect 7[0]
>>> to be valid?  It isn't, so you'd then have to redefine all
>>> types so that they are sequences that can be indexed.  Sounds
>>> like a big mess to me...
>>> 
>>> [Are there types for which len() returns a value that can't be
>>> indexed?]
>>> 

>RJ> Dictionaries.

>RJ> Which doesn't make your point less valid.  In fact I'd go so
>RJ> far as to argue that what len() gives you is the number of
>RJ> items in a container, so len(7) should return 0.

But len(7) could as well be defined as 3, 1, 32, or 64 (depending on the
implementation). Therefore it doesn't make much sense.
-- 
Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl>
URL: http://pietvanoostrum.com [PGP 8DAE142BE17999C4]
Private email: piet at vanoostrum.org