Bruno Desthuilliers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
It is actually. Ruby's syntax is mostly consistent and coherent, and there is much less special cases than in Python.I'd be glad to know which special cases are you referring to.
A few examples:
- A statement is different from an expression (2 special cases instead of one general case).
- You can't use statements in a lambda
- to get the length of a sequence, you use len(seq) instead of seq.len()
- to call objects attributes by name, you use [get|set]attr(obj, name [,value]) instead of obj.[get|set]attr(name [,value])
- if x is a class attribute of class A and a is an instance of A, a.x=anyvalue create a new instance attribute x instead of modifying A.x
- sequence methods that modify the sequence in place return None instead of returning self - ok, I know the rational for this one, but I still dont like it, and still count it as a special case since when using a 'destructive' sequence method I can't chain it with non-destructive method calls.
- object.__getattr__ (if it exists...) is called only when attribute name is not found. object.__setattr__ (if it exists...) is always called.
- functions are not methods
- old-style classes vs new-style classes
Also, Python enforce some coding style (indentation) but not some others (capitalization for example). So you always have to check, on a lib by lib base, what style has been used (I personnaly don't give a damn whether I use underscore_all_lower or mixedCaps, but consistency is useful, even more when there's such a huge stdlib). Worst, the base class for new style classes is all lower ('object') when the usual convention is to use CamelCase for classes.
Please note that you wrote "much less" which means there are probably so many that you weren't able to count them.
I'm not able to count them all, since a good part of them are not carved in my poor little brain - I just deal with them day after day. I love Python and find it one of the best languages around, but the truth is that it has warts - like any other language - and no one can honnestly deny it. Some are on the way to disappear (the type unification is a good thing in intself, even if it actually leads to having 2 more or less compatible object models...)
Regards, Bruno -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
