[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Empty Python lists [] don't know the type of the items it will
contain, so this sounds strange:
sum([])
0
Because that [] may be an empty sequence of someobject:
You are right in that sum could be used to sum arbitrary objects.
However, in 99.99% of the cases, you will be summing numerical values.
When adding real numbers, the neutral element is zero. ( X + 0 = X) It
is very logical to return zero for empty sequences.
Same way, if we would have a prod() function, it should return one for
empty sequences because X*1 = X. The neutral element for this operation
is one.
Of course this is not good for summing other types of objects. But how
clumsy would it be to use
sum( L +[0] )
or
if L:
value = sum(L)
else:
value = 0
instead of sum(L).
Once again, this is what sum() is used for in most cases, so this
behavior is the "expected" one.
Another argument to convince you: the sum() function in SQL for empty
row sets returns zero in most relational databases.
But of course it could have been implemented in a different way... I
believe that there have been excessive discussions about this decision,
and the current implementation is very good, if not the best.
Best,
Laszlo
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