On Wed, 21 Dec 2005 13:58:01 -0800, Erik Max Francis wrote:
> Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>
>> In that case, the name is misleadingly wrong. I suppose it is not likely
>> that it could be changed before Python 3?
>
> Why?
>
> The primary purpose of the .isdigit, etc. methods is to test whether a
> single character has a certain property. There is, however, no special
> character data type in Python, and so by necessity those methods must be
> on strings, not characters.
>
> Thus, you have basically two choices: Have the methods throw exceptions
> for strings with a length different from one, or have them just iterate
> over every character in a string. The latter is clearly a more useful
> functionality.
*shrug*
If your argument was as obviously correct as you think, shouldn't
ord("abc") also iterate over every character in the string, instead of
raising an exception?
But in any case, I was arguing that the *name* is misleading, not that the
functionality is not useful. (Some might argue that the functionality is
harmful, because it encourages Look Before You Leap testing.) In English,
a digit is a single numeric character. In English, "123 is a digit" is
necessarily false, in the same way that "A dozen eggs is a single egg" is
false.
In any case, it isn't important enough to break people's code. I'd rather
that the method isdigit() were called isnumeric() or something, but I can
live with the fact that it is not.
--
Steven.
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