On 5/26/2011 7:27 PM, Ethan Furman wrote:
I've tried this in 2.5 - 3.2:--> 'this is a test'.startswith('this') True --> 'this is a test'.startswith('this', None, None) Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> TypeError: slice indices must be integers or None or have an __index__ method The 3.2 docs say this: str.startswith(prefix[, start[, end]]) Return True if string starts with the prefix, otherwise return False. prefix can also be a tuple of prefixes to look for. With optional start, test string beginning at that position. With optional end, stop comparing string at that position
To me, that says pretty clearly that start and end have to be 'positions', ie, ints or other index types. So I would say that the error message is a bug. I see so reason why one would want to use None rather that 0 for start or None rather than nothing for end.
-- Terry Jan Reedy -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
