Andrew Koenig writes:
I happened to look at PEP 276 and was struck by the thought that PEP 276 is really an implementation of the well-known set-theoretic construction of the natural numbers that defines each natural number as the set of all smaller ones. In other words, it defines 0 as the empty set, 1 as the set whose only element is 0, 2 as the set whose elements are 0 and 1, and so on.
Interesting. I suppose that could be added as an extra argument against those who claim that [0,1,2,3,4,5] is *NOT* the sequence of integers "obviously" associated with the number 6. As for me, even before I started using Python I had already become convinced of that. PEP 276 is worth a second look. In fact, it's trivial to implement, and what it REALLY needs is a champion to bring it up with the BDFL (and others). Seriously, folks, replacing every one of these: >>> for i in range(len(myList)): ... doSomethingWithIndexes(i) with this: >>> for i in len(myList): ... doSomethingWithIndexes(i) is simple and elegant. And while at first glance it seems like allowing iteration over ints would open up all kinds of subtle bugs, I find that the PEP does a good job of arguing that it doesn't. -- Michael Chermside This email may contain confidential or privileged information. If you believe you have received the message in error, please notify the sender and delete the message without copying or disclosing it.