On Sun, 20 Apr 2003, Brett Cannon wrote:
> I think part of the trouble here is the name. The word "sum" just
> automatically causes one to think math. This leads to thinking of
> multiplication, division, and subtraction. But Alex's proposed function
> does more than a summation by special-casing the concatentation of
> strings.
>
> Perhaps renaming it to something like "combine()" would help do away with
> the worry of people wanting a complimentary version for multiplication
> since it does more than just sum numbers; it also combines strings in a
> very efficient manner.
Why not simply call it "add()", if it's going to be in the built-ins?
That seems like the most straightforward and accurate name.
It would have the same argument spec as min() and max(): it accepts
a single list argument, or multiple arguments to be added together.
Thus, no serious confusion with operator.add -- builtin add() would
work anywhere that operator.add works now.
>>> help(add)
add(...)
add(sequence) -> value
add(a, b, c, ...) -> value
With a single sequence argument, add together all the elements.
With two or more arguments, add together all the arguments.
New question: what is add([])? If add() is really polymorphic, then
this should probably raise an exception (just like min() and max() do).
That would lead to idioms such as
add(numberlist + [0])
add(stringlist + [''])
I suppose those don't look too bad. Nothing vastly better springs
to mind.
-- ?!ng
RetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue
Search and Browse the WWW like it's 1997 | Search results from DuckDuckGo
HTML:
3.2
| Encoding:
UTF-8
| Version:
0.7.4