[Python-3000] Python 3000 Status Update (Long!)

[Steve Howell]

--- Bill Janssen <janssen at parc.com> wrote:

> [...]  It's more important to make things work
> consistently than to only
> have "one way".  "sum" should concatenate strings.
> 

"Sum" should sum stuff.  You can't sum strings.  It
makes no sense in English.

You can concatenate strings, or you can join them
using a connecting string.  Since concatenating is
just a degenerate case of joining, it's hard to
justify a concat() builtin when you already have
''.join(), but I'd rather have a concat() builtin than
an insensible interpretation of sum().  

Multiple additions (with "+") mean "sum" in
arithmetic, but you can't generalize that to strings
and text processing.  The "+" operator for any two
strings is not about adding--it's about
joining/concatenating.  So multiple applications of
"+" on strings aren't a sum.  They're just a longer
join/concatenation. 

Remember also that you can't have "+" operate on a
string/integer pair.  It's just practicality that
Python uses the same punctuation for addition and
concatenation.  In English it's sensible to have
punctuation for addition, so it has "+," but it needs
no punctuation for joining/concatenation, so Python
had to pick the closest match.




       
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