On Mon, May 25, 2020, 11:56 PM Christopher Barker

> well, yes and no. this conversation was in the context of "None" works
> fine most of the time.
>

How many functions take None as a non-sentinel value?! How many of that
tiny numbers do so only because they are poorly designed.

None already is an excellent sentinel. We really don't need others. In the
rare case where we really need to distinguish None from "some other
sentinel" we should create our own special one.

The only functions I can think of where None is appropriately non-sentinel
are print(), id(), type(), and maybe a couple other oddball special ones.

Seriously, can you name a function from the standard library or another
popular library where None doesn't have a sentinel role as a function
argument (default or not)?
_______________________________________________
Python-ideas mailing list -- python-ideas@python.org
To unsubscribe send an email to python-ideas-le...@python.org
https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-ideas.python.org/
Message archived at 
https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-ideas@python.org/message/HRHERKG7LQABU6C3CCQ4ASRAX4NLRTAP/
Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/

Reply via email to