Christopher's quoting is kinda messed up and I can't be bothered fixing
it, sorry, so you'll just have to guess who said what :-)

Ideally, we are evaluating ideas independently of who expressed them, so I'll pretend I did that on purpose :-)

First: really people, it's all been said. I think we all (and I DO include myself in that) have fallen into the trap that "if folks don't agree with me, I must not have explained myself well enough" -- but in this case, we actually do disagree. And not really on the facts, just on the relative importance.

But since, I apparently did not explain myself well enough in this case:

> no -- but we could (and I think should) have a ternary flag, so that

> zip_longest becomes unnecessary. And we'd never get to eight combinations:
> you can't have longest and shortest behavior at the same time!

A ternary flag of strict = True, False or what?

Come on:

ternary: having three elements, parts, or divisions (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ternary)

did you really not know that? (and "flag" does not always mean "boolean flag", even thoughit often does (https://techterms.com/definition/flag) )

(by the way, I'm posting those references because I looked them up to make sure I wasn't using terms incorrectly)

This has been proposed multiple times on this list:

a flag that takes three possible values: "shortest" | "longest" | "equal" (defaulting to shortest of course). Name to be bikeshed later :-)

(and enum vs string also to be bikeshed later)