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[D'Arcy Cain]

On 2017-01-04 08:44 AM, Rodrigo Bistolfi wrote:
> 2017-01-04 7:39 GMT-03:00 Steve D'Aprano <steve+python at pearwood.info>:
>> Aside: you've actually raised a fascinating question. I wonder whether
>> there
>> are any programming languages that understand URLs as native data types, so
>> that *source code* starting with http:// etc is understood in the same way
>> that source code starting with [ is seen as a list or { as a dict?
>
> Some Smalltalk implementations have something that comes close:
>
> st> 'https://python.org' asUrl retrieveContents

But notice that even here the URL has to be defined as a string.  To be 
a first class object you would need to do something like this:

   url = https://python.org/

The only time you would see that is in config files and languages like 
shell where everything is a string so no quotes necessary.  They are 
implied.

> `asUrl` would be a string method returning a URL instance, which also has a
> convenient method `retrieveContents` wrapping an http client. Not hard to
> do with Python, I think this could be an interesting exercise for a learner.

Sure but the issue is, what to do with it.  In any case, it's still just 
a wrapper around various string methods.  You still need to give the 
class a string to create the object.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain
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