--- Ron Adam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Bill Janssen wrote: > >> I think you were missing my point, which is that > sum > >> doesn't and shouldn't necessarily have the same > >> semantics as map(+). > > > > It's not that I don't understand your argument, > Steve. > > > > I just don't find it effective. If we are going > to distinguish > > between "arithmetic addition" and "concatenation", > we should find > > another operator. > > > > As long as we *don't* do that, my personal > preference would be to > > either remove "sum" completely, or have it work in > a regular fashion, > > depending on which data type is passed to it, > either as arithmetic > > addition or as sequence concatenation. > > From the standpoint of readability and being able > to know what a > particular section of code does I believe it is > better to have limits that > make sense in cases where the behavior of a function > may change based on > what the data is. > > My preference would be to limit sum() to value > addition only, and never do > concatenation. For bytes types, it could be the > summing of bytes. This > could be useful for image data. For all non numeric > types it would > generate an exception. > > And if a general function that joins and/or extends > is desired, a separate > function possibly called merge() might be better. > Then sum() would always > do numerical addition and merge() would always do > concatenation of objects. > That makes the code much easier to read 6 months > from now with a lower > chance of having subtle bugs. > > The main thing for me is how quickly I can look at a > block of code and > determine what it does with a minimum of back > tracking and data tracing. >
Ron, I obviously agree with your overriding points 100%, and thank you for expressing them better than I did, but I would object to the name merge(). "Merge" to me has the semantics of blending strings, not joining them. English already has two perfectly well understood words for this concept: "abc", "def" -> "abcdef" The two English words are "join" and "concatenate." Python wisely chose the shorter word, although I can see arguments for the longer word, as "join" probably is a tiny bit more semantically overloaded than "concatenate." The best slang word for the above is "mush." ____________________________________________________________________________________ Now that's room service! Choose from over 150,000 hotels in 45,000 destinations on Yahoo! Travel to find your fit. http://farechase.yahoo.com/promo-generic-14795097 _______________________________________________ Python-3000 mailing list Python-3000@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-3000 Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-3000/archive%40mail-archive.com
