Re: [Python-3000] Changing behavior of sequence multiplication by negative integer

2006-08-10 Thread Slawomir Nowaczyk
On Thu, 10 Aug 2006 10:13:14 -0400 Jim Jewett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: #> >seq = seq + pad * (min_length- len(seq)) #> #> Typically, if I need to pad a sequence to a minimum length, I really #> need it to be a specific length. Having it already be too long is #> likely to cause problems la

Re: [Python-3000] Changing behavior of sequence multiplication by negative integer

2006-08-10 Thread Nick Coghlan
Jim Jewett wrote: > I would write it as > > # Create a record-size pad outside the loop > pad = " "*length > ... >seq = (seq+pad)[:length] I'd generally do padding to a fixed length that way as well, but any code relying on the current 'clip to 0' behaviour would break if this changed. With

Re: [Python-3000] Changing behavior of sequence multiplication by negative integer

2006-08-10 Thread Jim Jewett
Lawrence Oluyede wrote: > seq * -5 > and to be honest I've never seen code like that because the semantics > is somewhat senseless to me To be honest, I would almost expect the negative to mean "count from the end", so that it also reversed the sequence. It doesn't, but ... it does make for a ha

Re: [Python-3000] Changing behavior of sequence multiplication by negative integer

2006-08-10 Thread Lawrence Oluyede
> The "negative coerced to 0" behaviour is to make it easy to do things like > padding a sequence to a minimum length: > >seq = seq + pad * (min_length- len(seq)) > > Without the current behaviour, all such operations would need to be rewritten > as: > >seq = seq + pad * max((min_length- l

Re: [Python-3000] Changing behavior of sequence multiplication by negative integer

2006-08-10 Thread Nick Coghlan
Lawrence Oluyede wrote: > I've never seen bugs determined by operations such as: > > "foobar" * -1 > > and to be honest I've never seen code like that because the semantics > is somewhat senseless to me but I think the behavior of the expression > evaluation of "Sequence * negative integer" shoul

[Python-3000] Changing behavior of sequence multiplication by negative integer

2006-08-10 Thread Lawrence Oluyede
I've never seen bugs determined by operations such as: "foobar" * -1 and to be honest I've never seen code like that because the semantics is somewhat senseless to me but I think the behavior of the expression evaluation of "Sequence * negative integer" should be changed from: >>> "foobar" * -1