On 3/20/20 9:34 PM, Cameron Simpson wrote:
On 20Mar2020 13:57, Eric Fahlgren <ericfahlgren@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Mar 20, 2020 at 11:56 AM Dennis Sweeney <sweeney.dennis650@gmail.com> wrote:
If ``s`` is one these objects, and ``s`` has ``pre`` as a prefix, then ``s.cutprefix(pre)`` returns a copy of ``s`` in which that prefix has been removed. If ``s`` does not have ``pre`` as a prefix, an unchanged copy of ``s`` is returned. In summary, ``s.cutprefix(pre)`` is roughly equivalent to ``s[len(pre):] if s.startswith(pre) else s``.
The second sentence above unambiguously states that cutprefix returns 'an unchanged *copy*', but the example contradicts that and shows that 'self' may be returned and not a copy. I think it should be reworded to explicitly allow the optimization of returning self.
My versions of these (plain old functions) return self if unchanged, and are explicitly documented as doing so.
This has the concrete advantage that one can test for nonremoval if the suffix with "is", which is very fast, instead of == which may not be.
So one writes (assuming methods):
prefix = cutsuffix(s, 'abc') if prefix is s: ... no change else: ... definitely changed, s != prefix also
I am explicitly in favour of returning self if unchanged.
Why be so prescriptive? The semantics of these functions should be about what the resulting string contains. Leave it to implementors to decide when it is OK to return self or not. --Ned.