Implicit conversion to boolean in if and while statements

[Rick Johnson]

On Friday, February 8, 2013 6:05:54 PM UTC-6, Chris Angelico wrote:
> The sum builtin works happily on any sequence of objects
> that can be added together. It works as an excellent
> flatten() method:
> 
> >>> nested_list = [["q"], ["w","e"], ["r","t","u"], ["i","o","p"]]
> >>> sum(nested_list,[])
> ['q', 'w', 'e', 'r', 't', 'u', 'i', 'o', 'p']
> >>> nested_list
> [['q'], ['w', 'e'], ['r', 't', 'u'], ['i', 'o', 'p']]

What the hell? Oh yeah, you must be using pike again. No, if it were pike the list would look like this:

({({"q"}), ({"w","e"}), ({"r","t","u"}), ({"i","o","p"})})

Of course you'd have to declare it first using an /expanded/ Java syntax:

 nested_list = array(array(string))
 
Folks, i couldn't make this stuff up if i wanted to. Go read for yourself if want a few laughs.
  
  http://pike.lysator.liu.se/docs/tutorial/data_types/container_types.xml

> I'm not sure what your definition of a numeric type is, but I suspect
> that list(str) isn't part of it.

Of course not.