[Steven D'Aprano <st...@pearwood.info>] wrote: >>> values = take(count, items, default=None)
[MRAB] >> Why is the count first? Why not have the (definitely required) items >> first and let the count have a default of 1? [Steven] > I lifted the bulk of the function, including the signature, from the > recipe in the itertools documentation. > > I suspect the reason the recipe specifies the count first is because > that follows the standard order in English: > > "take two of the eggs" > > rather than "take eggs two of". Part of it, but I believe it's more following prior art, like Haskell's take: http://zvon.org/other/haskell/Outputprelude/take_f.html In that language, the case for putting the count first is overwhelming: all functions in Haskell take a single argument, and currying is ubiquitous. Being able, e.g., to write take3 = take 3 to get a function that returns the first 3 elements of whatever that function is applied to is far more useful, e.g., than being able to write take_from_x = take x to get a function such that `take_from_x n` returns the first `n` elements of `x`. The same follows in a weaker way in Python via fans of functools.partial _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list -- python-ideas@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to python-ideas-le...@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-ideas.python.org/ Message archived at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-ideas@python.org/message/CBML55NJXZLVUMLFYF5SRWSTA7MI2SCE/ Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
