Phillip J. Eby wrote:
> At 04:55 PM 9/5/2006 -0400, Barry Warsaw wrote:
>> On Sep 5, 2006, at 4:43 PM, Jim Jewett wrote:
>>
>>> I think I finally figured out where Raymond is coming from.
>>>
>>> For Raymond, "head" is where he started processing -- for rpartition,
>>> this is the .endswith part.
>>>
>>> For me, "head" is the start of the data structure -- always the
>>> .startswith part.
>>>
>>> We won't resolve that with anything suggesting a sequential order; we
>>> need something that makes it clear which part is the large leftover.
>> See, for me, it's all about the results of the operation, not how the
>> results are (supposedly) used. The way I think about it is that I've
>> got some string and I'm looking for some split point within that
>> string. That split point is clearly the "middle" (but "sep" works
>> too) and everything to the right of that split point gets returned in
>> "right" while everything to the left gets returned in "left".
>
> +1 for left/sep/right for both operations. It's easier to remember a
> visual correlation (left,sep,right) than it is to try and think about an
> abstraction in which the order of results has something to do with what
> direction I found the separator in.
-1. The string docs are already lousy with left/right terminology that is
flatout wrong when dealing with a script that is displayed with a
right-to-left or vertical orientation*. In reality, strings are processed such
that index 0 is the first character and index -1 is the last character,
regardless of script orientation, but you could be forgiven for not realising
that after reading the current string docs. Let's not make that particular
problem any worse.
I don't see anything wrong with Raymond's 'head, sep, tail' and 'tail, sep,
head' terminology (although noting the common postcondition 'sep not in head'
in the docstrings might be useful).
However, if we're going to use the same result tuple for both, then I'd prefer
'before, sep, after', with the partition() postcondition being 'sep not in
before' and the rpartition() postcondition being 'sep not in after'. Those
terms are accurate regardless of script orientation.
Either way, I suggest putting the postcondition in the docstring to make the
difference between the two methods explicit.
Regards,
Nick.
* I acknowledge that Python *code* is almost certainly going to be edited in a
left-to-right text editor, because it's an English-based programming language.
But the strings that string methods like partition() and rpartition() are used
with are quite likely to be coming from or written to a or user interface that
uses a native script orientation.
--
Nick Coghlan | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Brisbane, Australia
---------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.boredomandlaziness.org
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