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I'm new to Python and this is my first suggestion, so please bear with me:<br><br>I believe there is a simple but useful string operation missing from Python: subtraction. This is best described by way of example:<br><br>>>> "Mr Nesbit has learnt the first lesson of not being seen." - "Nesbit "<br>'Mr has learnt the first lesson of not being seen.'<br>>>> "Can't have egg, bacon, spam and sausage without the spam." - " spam"<br>'Can't have egg, bacon, and sausage without the spam.'<br>>>> "I'll bite your legs off!" - "arms"<br>'I'll bite your legs off!'<br><br>If b and c were strings, then:<br><br>a = b - c<br><br>would be equivalent to:<br><br>if b.find(c) < 0:<br> a = b<br>else:<br> a = b[:b.find(c)] + b[b.find(c)+len(c):]<br><br>The operation would remove from the minuend the first occurrence (searching from left to right) of the subtrahend. In the case of no match, the minuend would be returned unmodified.<br><br>To those unfamiliar with string subtraction, it might seem non-intuitive, but it's a useful programming construct. Many things can be done with it and it's a good way to keep code simple. I think it would be preferable to the current interpreter response:<br><br>>>> record = line - newline<br>Traceback (most recent call last):<br> File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module><br>TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for -: 'str' and 'str'<br><br>As the interpreter currently checks for this attempted operation, it seems it would be straightforward to add the code needed to do something useful with it. I don't think there would be backward compatibility issues, as this would be a new feature in place of a fatal error. </body>
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