Steven D'Aprano wrote:
Using "truncate" to mean "increase in size" makes about as much sense as having a list method called "remove" used to insert items. I can't imagine what the committee who approved this were thinking.
I expect the reason is historical. Some time back in the early days of Unix, someone wanted a way of chopping back files, so they added a truncate() system call. Then someone else noticed that it would happily accept an argument greater than the existing length, and it seemed like that could be useful behaviour, so they documented it and left it that way. Then the POSIX committee came along and incorporated it into the standard so as to be compatible with existing practice. -- Greg _______________________________________________ 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
