[Patches] Re: [Patch #103693] tupleobject.c: implement tuple.index() and t

Guido van Rossum guido@digicool.com
Sat, 24 Feb 2001 12:15:38 -0500


> Guido,
> 
> are you really sure about this one ?

Yes, I am.  If you have a need for using count() or index() on tuples,
you're using them the wrong way.  Tuples should be used in situations
where a small record (in Pascal terms) or struct (in C terms) would be
used in other languages -- not as immutable arrays.

> The two methods here proposed relate to the constness of
> tuples (compare also with immutable_list_methods[]),

String methods were introduced for a good reason -- the introduction
of Unicode.

> and I do indeed think that their absence is a semantical
> mismatch, esp. now that strings also have methods.

I think adding these particular methods to tuples will just propagate
the misunderstanding that tuples are primarily sequences -- they're
not.

> And for the size argument - well, it's really just a few bytes
> of code.

I didn't mean code size -- I meant stuff that has to be taught,
learned, documented.

> Markus
> (author of PySol)

Thanks for PySol, Markus!  It's an excellent game and has even drawn
people into learning Python!

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)