On Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:10:07 +0100, Piet van Oostrum <p...@cs.uu.nl> wrote:
"Rhodri James" <rho...@wildebst.demon.co.uk> (RJ) wrote:
RJ> 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?]
RJ> Dictionaries.
RJ> Which doesn't make your point less valid. In fact I'd go so
RJ> far as to argue that what len() gives you is the number of
RJ> items in a container, so len(7) should return 0.
But len(7) could as well be defined as 3, 1, 32, or 64 (depending on the
implementation). Therefore it doesn't make much sense.
Quite.
--
Rhodri James *-* Wildebeest Herder to the Masses
--
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