On Tue, 14 Jul 2015 01:12 pm, Ian Kelly wrote: > On Mon, Jul 13, 2015 at 10:56 AM, Roel Schroeven <r...@roelschroeven.net> > wrote: >> Hi, >> >> Quick question: why does str have both index() and find(), while list >> only has index()? Is there a reason for that, or is it just an historical >> accident? > > Historical accident, I think. If it were to be redone, I doubt that > str.find would exist. The problem with it is that it returns -1 to > indicate that the argument was not found, but -1 is a valid index into > the string. This is a potential source of hard-to-find bugs.
Correct. But rather than removing it, it would be better to take a leaf out of re.match's book and return None as the sentinel. That would eliminate the "using -1 as a valid index" bug. -- Steven -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list