Colin J. Williams: > Why not replace the __len__ method with a len property for strings, > lists, tuples, dictionaries etc. __len__ is not very special and the > property len eliminates the redundant parentheses.
You mean something like: >>> "ab".len, [1, 2, 3].len (2, 3) In the given page Guido says: >I didn't want these special operations to use ordinary method names, because >then pre-existing classes, or classes written by users without an encyclopedic >memory for all the special methods, would be liable to accidentally define >operations they didn't mean to implement, with possibly disastrous >consequences.< I think it's easy enough to remember a len attribute, you use it all the time. >many functions are defined in terms of informal interfaces; for example, >reversed works on anything that supports random access to items and has a >known length. In practice, implementing things like max, sum, map, any, in and >others, as built-in functions and operators is actually less code than >implementing them as methods for each and every type that needs to support >them.< I agree, but I think some exceptions can be made for len attribute, and for .copy(), .deepcopy(), and maybe for few other general methods. Bye, bearophile -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
