On 12 October 2012 20:39, Georg Brandl g.brandl@gmx.net wrote:
Am 12.10.2012 18:27, schrieb Ethan Furman:
Georg Brandl wrote:
Am 12.10.2012 14:45, schrieb Blake Hyde:
I'm a Python developer rather than a developer of Python, but I'd like
to ask a
question about this option (and implicitly vote against it, I
suppose); if you
specialize a method name, such as .pathjoin, aren't you implying that
methods
must be unambiguous even across types and classes? This seems
negative. Even
if .join is already used for strings, it also makes sense for this use
case.
Of course different classes can have methods of the same name.
The issue here is that due to the similarity (and interchangeability)
of path
objects and strings it is likely that people get them mixed up every
now and
then, and if .join() works on both objects the failure mode (strange
result
from str.join when you expected path.join) is horribly confusing.
I don't understand the "horribly confusing" part. Sure, when I got them mixed up and ended up with a plain ol' string instead of a really cool Path it took a moment to figure out where I had made the error, but the traceback of "AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'path'" left absolutely no room for confusion as to what the problem was.
"no attribute 'path'"? Not sure where that exception comes from. This is what I meant:
p = Path('/usr') p.join('lib')
Path('/usr/lib')
p = '/usr' p.join('lib')
'l/usri/usrb'
I don't know about you, but I found that so horribly confusing I had to check the output. I'm just not used to thinking of str.join(str) as sensible, and I could not for the life of me see where the output 'l/usri/usrb' came from. Where was "lib"?
I might just have been an idiot for a minute, but it'll just get harder in real code. And I'm not the worst for stupid mistakes: we wan't newbies to be able (and want) to use the built in path modules. When they come back wondering why
homepath.join("joshua").join(".config")
returned
'.j/homeo/homes/homeh/homeu/homeacj/homeo/homes/homeh/homeu/homeaoj/homeo/homes/homeh/homeu/homeanj/homeo/homes/homeh/homeu/homeafj/homeo/homes/homeh/homeu/homeaij/homeo/homes/homeh/homeu/homeag'
we are going to have a problem.
So I agree with you [Georg Brandl] here. I would even rather .pathjoin/.joinpath than .join despite the utterly painful name*.
* As others have stated, if you like it why not .strjoin and .dictupdate and .listappend?