[Python-3000] Droping find/rfind?

[Jack Diederich]

On Tue, Aug 22, 2006 at 06:32:39PM -0700, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> At today's sprint, one of the volunteers completed a patch to rip out
> find() and rfind(), replacing all calls with index()/rindex(). But now
> I'm getting cold feet -- is this really a good idea? (It's been listed
> in PEP 3100 for a long time, but I haven't thought about it much,
> really.)
> 
> What do people think?

Looking at my own code I use find() in two cases

1) in an "if" clause where "in" or startswith() would be appropriate
   This code was written when I started with python and is closer to
   C++ or perl or was a literal translation of a snippet of C++ or perl

2) where try/except around index() would work just fine and partition
   would be even better.  eg/
   try:
     parts.append(text[text.index('himom')])
   except ValueError: pass

This is 50 uses of find/rfind in 70 KLOCs of python.  Considering I would
be better off not using find() in the places I do use it I would be happy
to see it go.  

-Jack