Magnus Lycka wrote: > Ron Adam wrote: >> ONES BASED NEGATIVE INDEXING
I think Ron's idea is taking off from my observation that if one's complement, rather than negation, was used to specify measure-from- right, we would have a simple consistent system (although I also observed it is far too late to do that to Python now). Using such a system should not define things as below: >> | a | b | c | >> +---+---+---+ >> -4 -3 -2 -1 but rather use a form like: >> | a | b | c | >> +---+---+---+ >> ~3 ~2 ~1 ~0 >> The '~' is the binary not symbol which when used >> with integers returns the two's compliment. Actually, the ~ operator is the one's complement operator. > For calculated values on the slice borders, you still > have -1 as end value. But if you are defining the from-right as ones complement, you use one's complement on the calculated values and all proceeds happily. Since this could happen in Python, perhaps we should call it Pythoñ. >> a[1:~1] -> center, one position from both ends. > > This is just a convoluted way of writing a[1:-2], which > is exactly the same as you would write today. Actually, a[1 : -1] is how you get to drop the first and last characters today. I suspect you knew this and were just a bit in a hurry criticizing a lame-brained scheme. -Scott David Daniels [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
