Terry Reedy wrote:
bearophileh...@lycos.com wrote:
Also: what's the rationale of allowing negative values too?
I can guess two:
1) Nuisance to check given that Python does not have a count
(0,1,2...) type.
2. Useful. + = items on hand; - = items back-ordered. Bank account go
negative also ;-). So does elevation.
Similarly, an app could set 0 to mean 'desired quantity on hand', so
non-zero count is surplus or deficit.
I might not have thought to allow this, but it seems to open new
applications. (This definitely makes bag or multiset inappropriate
as names.)
I would've limited the counts to non-negative values too, but being able
to store negative values does allow credit/debit or in-stock/on-order.
In such cases, the name 'Counter' makes more sense.
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