[Python-ideas] Removing some string methods?

[Gregory P. Smith]

On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 10:16 PM, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:
> On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 12:36 PM, Raymond Hettinger <python at rcn.com> wrote:
>> [AMK]
>>>
>>> Has any consideration been given to removing some of the lesser-used
>>> string methods in 3.0?  e.g. .center, .ljust/rjust, .zfill, .swapcase?
>>
>> I don't think we gain anything by taking justification and centering methods
>> away. It just makes life difficult for people like me who use those
>> methods for formatting text.  Also, these methods have nearly zero mental
>> overhead -- they are self-explanatory and have no learning curve.
>>
>> The swapcase() method is more use case challenged and could probably be
>> zapped without anyone caring.
>>
>> The zfill() method is no longer necessary because rjust() takes an optional
>> fillchar argument:
>>
>>   '123'.zfill(10) == '123'.rjust(10, '0')
>
> Ah cool! I don't think I knew about that because I always knew about
> zfill(). Probably would have found it if I zfill() didn't exist.
>
> So for Python 3.1 we can probably safely ditch the two methods (and
> probably review the methods on the other types as well).
>
> -Brett

zfill and rjust are not the same.  zfill treats it as a number and
moves the sign.

>>> e = b'-33'
>>> e.zfill(7)
b'-000033'
>>> e.rjust(7, '0')
b'0000-33'