Ben Finney wrote:
> Steve Holden <steve at holdenweb.com> writes:
>>>>This would just be bloat
>>> How would it be bloat? I'm describing a situation where the existing
> methods merely move, being implemented in a common ancestor rather
> than directly in the concrete sequence classes.
>>>>without any use cases being demonstrated. What is your crying need
>>for these methods?
>>> I don't think I claimed a crying need for one. Consistency, where not
> foolish, is desirable.
>> I don't deny that there is work involved; my suggestion was in the
> context of talking about a common ancestor to 'bytes' and 'str', in
> order to refactor some of the common methods.
>>>>Your *real* generalisation of the string method would actually
>>require you to write
>>>> ["foo", "bar", "spam", "baz", "quux", "wibble"].startswith(["foo"])
>>> Yes, you're right. I realised that after sending, but didn't correct
> it.
>>>>Python didn't get to be the language it is today by adding
>>unnecessary hypergeneralisations on a whim. Show me how these
>>methods will improve the daily lives of programmers and I'll
>>champion them to the developers, but I don't think the world will be
>>beating a path to your door.
>>> Again, I'm discussing a still-nascent suggestion for a common sequence
> ancestor; there are no demands here. If there is to be generalisation,
> I'm merely pointing out that it could be at a higher level and be more
> useful.
>> If nothing else, it would lend more coherence to the "str is a
> sequence" confusion if *all* sequences shared some str-derived
> methods.
>Unfortunately this is where your argument falls to the ground. Strings
really are special, since each element of a string is another string.
What confusion?
Any proposal that tries to make strings and lists subclasses of a common
ancestor is doomed to failure: strings are highly optimised for
performance (in Python and in other languages), and the optimisations
just wouldn't translate to a "generic sequence". That's just life in the
real world.
regards
Steve
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