On 12/29/05, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote: > Noam Raphael wrote: > > is currently "Return a shallow copy of a set." > > > > Perhaps "shallow" should be removed, since set members are supposed to > > be immutable so there's no point in a deep copy? > > That still doesn't make copy return a deep copy, right? "shallow copy" > is more precise than "copy", and correct - what is gained from > removing it? Perhaps it bothers the programmer with something that shouldn't bother him. I mean that I might do help(set.copy), and then think, "Oh, it returns a shallow copy. Wait a minute - 'shallow' means that I get a new object, which references the same objects as the old one. Perhaps I should use another function, which does deep copying? Let me think about it - no. All members of a set are immutable, so it doesn't matter." I think that in this case, the fact that the copy is shallow is an implementation detail, since there's no sense in making a deep copy of a set. Implementation details should probably not be a part of the definition of what a method does. I know it's just a word, and that it doesn't matter a lot. But why not make things a tiny bit better? Noam
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