[Python-3000] Making more effective use of slice objects in Py3k

[Greg Ewing]

Josiah Carlson wrote:

> If every operation on a view returned a string copy, then what would be
> the point of the view in the first place?

String views would have all the same methods as a real
string, so you could find(), index(), etc. while operating
efficiently on the original data. To my mind this is
preferable to having little-used optional arguments on
an easily-forgotten subset of the string methods: you
only have to remember one thing (how to create a view)
rather than a bunch of random things.

For some things, such as partition(), it might be worth
having a variant that returned views instead of new strings.
But it would be named differently, so you'd still know
whether you were getting a view or not.

On the other hand, this would introduce another random
set of things to remember, i.e. which methods have
view-returning variants. Although maybe it would be
easier to remember them, being different methods rather
than optional arguments to existing methods. Their
existence would show up more clearly under introspection,
for example.

I'm not personally advocating one approach or the other
here -- just pointing out an alternative that might be
more acceptable to the BDFL.

--
Greg