On Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:57:02 +0100, Grant Edwards <inva...@invalid> wrote:

On 2009-07-24, Dr. Phillip M. Feldman <pfeld...@verizon.net> wrote:

Some aspects of the Python design are remarkably clever, while
others leave me perplexed. Here's an example of the latter:
Why does len() give an error when applied to an int or float?
len() should always return something; in particular, when
applied to a scalar, it should return a value of 1.

If len(7) returned a value of 1, then wouldn't one expect 7[0]
to be valid?  It isn't, so you'd then have to redefine all
types so that they are sequences that can be indexed.  Sounds
like a big mess to me...

[Are there types for which len() returns a value that can't be
indexed?]


Dictionaries.

Which doesn't make your point less valid.  In fact I'd go so
far as to argue that what len() gives you is the number of
items in a container, so len(7) should return 0.

--
Rhodri James *-* Wildebeest Herder to the Masses
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