Jon Forrest <nob...@gmail.com> writes: > I'm learning about Python. A book I'm reading about it
Can you say which book, and where in the book it says this? > says "... a string in Python is a sequence. A sequence is an ordered > collection of objects". This implies that each character in a string > is itself an object. It does imply that. To phrase it that way might be slightly misleading, though. It is *not* true, for example, to say that the characters in the string already exist as objects. I would prefer to state the implication this way: *When* treating the string as a sequence, it *produces* each character as a separate (length 1) string object. That is, the one-character string objects are generated when needed, and do not exist otherwise. > This doesn't seem right to me, but since I'm just learning Python > I questioned the author about this. He gave an example the displays > the ids of string slices. These ids are all different, but I think > that's because the slicing operation creates objects. That's a separate matter :-) A slice is itself an object, which allows dealing with part of a sequence. > I'd like to suggest an explanation of what a sequence is that doesn't > use the word 'object' because an object has a specific meaning in > Python. The term “object” is correct in everything you've presented so far; I think that term is fine for what you're saying. I think, rather, that you may have an incorrect understanding of a sequence. The objects produced by an operation on a sequence – a slice, or iterating the sequence – do not necessarily exist as distinct objects before that operation. > Am I on the right track here? I hope that helps. -- \ “The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect | `\ everything; the young know everything.” —Oscar Wilde, _Phrases | _o__) and Philosophies for the Use of the Young_, 1894 | Ben Finney -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
