Perl is worse! (was: Python is Wierd!)

[Ben Wolfson]

On Fri, 28 Jul 2000 07:57:12 GMT, grey at despair.rpglink.com (Steve Lamb)
wrote:

>On Fri, 28 Jul 2000 05:56:07 GMT, Grant Edwards <nobody at nowhere.nohow> wrote:
>>>    foo is not ['a'].
>
>>It is when I try it...
>
>   ...  
>
>>> It took a single element and made it a list. 
>
>    Right, which is what I said here, who knows how the not got there.
>
>>No, it took a sequence containing a single element and turned it into a list
>>containing a single element.  list() only works on sequences.  'a' is a
>>sequence of length 1.
>
>    That is what I said.  It took a single element and made it a list with a
>single element.
>
>>>So we now know that a single element has a sequence.  
>
>>Not in the general case.
>
>    Not in this language.  In general, yes.  Both of these are a single
>element sequence.  1.  a.  Because Python doesn't think so doesn't make it any
>less so.

You don't even know that a single element has a sequence.  You just know
that a sequence with only one element has a sequence, which is no great
revelation, I think.

>>No, 1 is not a sequence.  1 is an integer.  [1] is a sequence.  (1) is a
>>sequence.
>
>    1 is a single element sequence, regardless of any arbitrary type assigned
>to it.

How is assigning what is rather clearly a number the type "number"
arbitrary?

If one is a single-element sequence, why does one plus one equal two?
Sequence addition should be equivalent to concatenation.

And if one is a sequence, what's one hundred and eleven?  A three-element
sequence, or a one-element?  I mean, is 111[0] 111, or 1?

>>str() and list() are not inverse operations.  They are neither claimed nor
>>intended to be. 
>
>    Nor did I claim they were.  That's three people who didn't read the last
>sentence of that paragraph.

I read it, I just didn't see the point in the entire paragraph being there
if you weren't making some implicit criticism of the current system.

-- 
Barnabas T. Rumjuggler

True, Father Time has long and cruelly sodomized me with the splintered
haft of his great scythe, but I shall out-live the God-damned lot of you!
 -- T. Herman Zweibel