The doc for the find() method of string objects, which is
essentially the same as the string.find() function, states:
find(sub[, start[, end]])
Return the lowest index in the string where substring sub
is found, such that sub is contained in the range [start,
end). Optional arguments start and end are interpreted as
in slice notation. Return -1 if sub is not found.
Consider:
print 'Hello'.find('o')
or:
import string
print string.find('Hello', 'o')
The substring 'o' is found in 'Hello' at the index -1, and at
the index 4, and it is not found at any other index. Both the
locations found are in the range [start, end), and obviously -1
is less than 4, so according to the documentation, find() should
return -1.
What the either of the above actually prints is:
4
which shows yet another bug resulting from Python's handling of
negative indexes. This one is clearly a documentation error, but
the real fix is to cure the wart so that Python's behavior is
consistent enough that we'll be able to describe it correctly.
--
--Bryan
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
