[Phillip J. Eby] > At 09:14 AM 8/8/2005 -0700, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > I'm not going to change my mind on text() unless someone explains > > what's so attractive about it. > 2. It's more obvious to programmers that it's a *text* string rather > than a string of bytes I've no opinion on the proposal on itself, except maybe that "text", that precise word or name, is a pretty bad choice. It is far too likely that people already use or want to use that precise identifier. There once was a suggestion for naming "text" the module now known as "textwrap", under the premise that it could be later extended for holding many other various text-related functions. Happily enough, this idea was not retained. "textwrap" is much more reasonable as a name. I found Python 1.5.2's "string" to be especially prone to clashing. I still find "socket" obtrusive in that respect. Consider "len" as an example of a clever choice, while "length" would not have been. "str" is also a good choice. "object" is a bit more annoying theoretically, yet we almost never need it in practice. "type" is annoying as a name (yet very nice as a concept), as if it was free to use, it would often serve to label our own things. The fact is we often need the built-in. Python should not choose common English words for its built-ins, without very careful thought, and be reluctant to any compulsion in this area. -- François Pinard http://pinard.progiciels-bpi.ca _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
