Hello all,

I'm new to Python but quite familiar with Lisp. So my question is about Python list-related functions. Why append(), extend(), sort(), reverse() etc. doesn't return a reference to it's own (modified) argument ? IMHO (I'm tweaking Python 2.1 to allow first example possible),

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[3 + x * 2 for x in [5, 8, 9, 3].sort()].extend([6, 3, 8].reverse()) [9, 13, 19, 21, 8, 3, 6]

looks much better (and more "functional") than

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x = [5, 8, 9, 3] x.sort() x = [3 + x * 2 for x in x] y = [6, 3, 8] y.reverse() x.extend(y) x [9, 13, 19, 21, 8, 3, 6]

Python designers and fans, please explain it to me :-). Any comments are welcome.

Thanks and reply to me directly if possible, Dmitry Antipov

Funny, to me your first form is much harder to read than your second. With the first form, I have to stop and think and look carefully at where the brackets are to see in which order the operations are executed, while in the second form it's obvious, because it's broken down in smaller chunks. So I guess that's the real reason: Python users have a procedural brain, not a functional brain, and we don't like Lispish code. Maybe we also have a smaller brain than the typical Lisper -- I would say, that would make us more normal, and if Python caters to people with a closer-to-average brain size, that would mean more people will be able to program in Python. History will decide... --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)