.title() - annoying mistake

[Robert Latest]

Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 21, 2021 at 4:31 AM Robert Latest via Python-list
><python-list at python.org> wrote:
>>
>> Mats Wichmann wrote:
>> > The problem is that there isn't a standard for title case,
>>
>> The problem is that we owe the very existence of the .title() method to too
>> much weed being smoked during Python development. It makes specific
>> assumptions about a specific use case of one specific language. It doesn't
>> get more idiotic, frankly.
>>
>
> The problem is that you haven't read the documentation :) It very carefully
> does NOT define itself by language, and its behaviour is identical regardless
> of the language used.

The documentation says: "The algorithm uses a simple language-independent
definition of a word as groups of consecutive letters..."

Yes, I get that. But the purpose it (improperly) serves only makes sense in the
English language. Which is also the reason they called it title() and not
capitalize_words(). Frankly, I can't think of any situation where this method
would have any use -- in any language, including English. It is just a
completely arbitrary feature, as would be a function that capitalizes only the
last letter of each word.

robert