Aahz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: ... > This works in all versions of Python back to 1.5.2 IIRC. reversed() is > a moderately new built-in function;
Yep: it came with Python 2.4, first alpha just 4 years ago, final release about 3 years and 8 months ago. "Moderately new" seems an appropriate tag. > I would agree with people who claim > that you should memorize most of the built-in functions (which is > precisely why there is a high barrier to adding more built-in functions). I think the built-in functions and types a beginner is likely to need are a "fuzzy subset" (the decision of whether to include or exclude something being not really obvious:-) roughly including: abs all any bool chr cmp dict dir enumerate float getattr help hex int iter len list max min object open ord property raw_input reversed set sorted str sum tuple unichr unicode xrange zip all reasonably documented at <http://docs.python.org/lib/built-in-funcs.html> . Of course, as I mentioned, most inclusions and exclusions may be debatable (why do I think people need xrange and not necessarily range, set and not necessarily frozenset, property rather than classmethod, hex more likely than oct, probably not complex, etc etc). > But certainly if you're using a datatype you should make a point of > reading all its documentation, which would mean you'd know that list() > can convert any iterable type. Yes, and also the methods and operators of (out of the builtin types I listed above): dict float int list open[*] set str tuple unicode [*] well really file, that's the name of the builtin type, but open is what one should use as a factory function for it!-) str and unicode have almost identical methods, save for the big crucial difference on the semantics of method .translate; float and int also have the same operators; and tuple has hardly anything, so the learning task is nowhere as big as it may seem from here:-). Alex -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
