On 7/25/2009 10:08 AM, Piet van Oostrum wrote:
Steven D'Aprano <st...@remove-this-cybersource.com.au> (SD) wrote:
SD> Ambiguity essentially boils down to being unable to reasonably predict
SD> the expectation of the coder. I say "reasonably", because if you allow
SD> unreasonable situations, everything is "ambiguous":
That's for me the reason that len(42) is ambiguous. The OP apparently
had 1 as expectation, whereas my first thought was the minimal number of
bits to represent the number and 7.5 million came later :=). The number
of bits I certainly find reasonable, and I would find the number of
decimal digits equally reasonable. More so than 1, actually. 1 as the
length of an int doesn't give any information.
Well, for my two cents, I will say that the number of binary bits or
decimal digits is certainly the most sensible return value, and that the
former is the most useful, because the latter can be got with
len(str(42)). However, the former can also be (/slightly/ less)easily
got with len(bin(42))-2...
I also think that "Explicit is better than implicit." says that there
should be no return value in this case, as any return value would be
implicit.
Marcus
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