[Tim, giving his "<wink>" key a rest] > Say what?! What kind of stupid-ass language spells the len() function as > if it were a method? That's carrying consistency to an irrational > extreme -- [James_Althoff@i2.com] > Well, only those stupid-ass, irrational, and extremist languages that > include classes and methods as an integral and uniform part of > the language from the very beginning, I guess. I was more than half joking, but not entirely. > The "stupid-ass, irrational, extremist" side is merely saying that > > mylist.append(x) > mylist.length() > mylist.extend(y) > mylist.length() > > is more sensible (easier for new-to-python programmers to discover, > more consistent, more mainstream) Of course that's what they're saying, although "mainstream" is debatable: pure-OO languages aren't exactly mainstream, and Python isn't a pure-OO language. It doesn't follow that Python is mainstream, but neither does it follow that ".length()" isn't an eyesore <wink>. > But you all clearly like spelling it len(mylist) and it's already > there, so > ... whatever. I wouldn't want to write math.pi.sin() either -- functional notation for pure (referentially transparent; side-effect free) functions has a long and fine tradition, in and out of computer languages, and I *think* "get the length of some list", not "list, of all the things I may ask you for, in this case I want your length". It simply reads better to me as a function. Guido said he'd do it the other way had he to do it over, so I'll have to rest on "it's already there".
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