On Nov 4, 8:00 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > MRAB: > > > It's interesting, if you think about it, that here we have someone who > > wants to split on a set of characters but 'split' splits on a string, > > and others sometimes want to strip off a string but 'strip' strips on > > a set of characters (passed as a string). > > That can be seen as a little inconsistency in the language. But with > some practice you learn it. > > > You could imagine that if > > Python had had (character) sets from the start then 'split' and > > 'strip' could have accepted a string or a set depending on whether you > > wanted to split on or stripping off a string or a set. > > Too bad you haven't suggested this when they were designing Python > 3 :-) > This may be suggested for Python 3.1. > I might also add that str.startswith can accept a tuple of strings; shouldn't that have been a set? :-)
I also had the thought that the backtick (`), which is not used in Python 3, could be used to form character set literals (`aeiou` => set("aeiou")), although that might only be worth while if character sets were introduced as an specialised form of set. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list