Gareth McCaughan wrote: > On Sunday 2005-11-13 17:43, Marc-Andre Lemburg wrote: > > [Noam Raphael:] > >>>The idea is to add a method called "dedent" to strings. It would do >>>exactly what the current textwrap.indent function does. > > > [Marc-Andre:] > >>You are missing a point here: string methods were introduced >>to make switching from plain 8-bit strings to Unicode easier. >> >>As such they are only needed in cases where an algorithm >>has to work on the resp. internals differently or where direct >>access to the internals makes a huge difference in terms >>of performance. > > > In a language that generally pays as much attention to > practical usability as Python, it seems a pity to say > (as you seem to be implying) that whether something is > a string method or a function in (say) the "textwrap" > module should be determined by internal implementation > details.
We have to draw a line somewhere - otherwise you could just as well add all functions that accept single string arguments as methods to the basestring sub-classes. >>>Writing multilined strings without spaces in the beginning of lines >>>makes functions harder to read, since although the Python parser is >>>happy with it, it breaks the visual indentation. >> >>This is really a minor compiler/parser issue and not one which >>warrants adding another string method. > > Adding another string method seems easier, and a smaller > change, than altering the compiler or parser. What's your > point here? I think I must be missing something. The point is that the presented use case does not originate in a common need (to dedent strings), but from a desire to write Python code with embedded indented triple-quoted strings which lies in the scope of the parser, not that of string objects. -- Marc-Andre Lemburg eGenix.com Professional Python Services directly from the Source (#1, Nov 14 2005) >>> Python/Zope Consulting and Support ... http://www.egenix.com/ >>> mxODBC.Zope.Database.Adapter ... http://zope.egenix.com/ >>> mxODBC, mxDateTime, mxTextTools ... http://python.egenix.com/ ________________________________________________________________________ 2005-10-17: Released mxODBC.Zope.DA 1.0.9 http://zope.egenix.com/ ::: Try mxODBC.Zope.DA for Windows,Linux,Solaris,FreeBSD for free ! :::: _______________________________________________ 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
