Steve Howell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > 3) The median example raises the question of what > would happen with an empty list. I don't think it's > important to cover that case in the simple example > (it's really the responsibility of the caller IMO not > to call median with nonsense arguments), but perhaps > there is a simple way to fix this?
An empty list raises an IndexError, a non-iterable raises TypeError. This is correct behavior IMHO, there is nothing to fix. Median should return an element (or average of two) from its input and if that is not meaningful returning None or other special value is neither appropriate nor Pythonic. Only the caller knows how to handle such exceptional circumstances. Actually there are some other issues. Should the median of an even number of integers allow halves? Should median insist that its input has an odd number of elements? But it's tough squeezing all that discourse into 13 or 14 lines ;-) BankAccount allows arbitrarily large withdrawals, is that to be fixed too? -- Pete Forman -./\.- Disclaimer: This post is originated WesternGeco -./\.- by myself and does not represent [EMAIL PROTECTED] -./\.- the opinion of Schlumberger or http://petef.port5.com -./\.- WesternGeco. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list