On Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 3:33 PM Christopher Barker <pythonchb@gmail.com> wrote:
As for using an empty tuple, thanks Guido for laying out the logic so succinctly, and it does make it pretty simple that only the one index case is special. Nevertheless, I think most folks expect the special case to be at the end of the "series", not in the middle -- i.e.
four is the same as three is the same as two, one is special, and zero is not allowed.
rather than
four is the same as three is the same as two, one is special, and zero is the same as two, three, four, ...
For that reason, I prefer a separate sentinel.
English treats 1 as special and 0 as the same as other numbers when it comes to singulars and plurals. You talk about "an item", but "no items" or "two items" or "three items". As you descend through the numbers, four ("items") is the same as three ("items") is the same as two ("items"), and one is special ("item"), and zero is back to the normal case ("items"). I'm not saying that English should be the fundamental basis upon which Python is designed, but at least there's some precedent :) What do other languages do in this way? Are other human languages based around the idea that zero matches others, or are there different ways to write things? Dutch is, of course, of particular interest here :) ChrisA