[Python-Dev] Lockstep iteration - eureka!

[Tim Peters]

[Paul Prescod]
> Let me throw out another idea. What if sequences just had
> .items() methods?

[Barry A. Warsaw]
> Funny, I remember talking with Guido about this on a lunch trip
> several years ago.  Tim will probably chime in that /he/ proposed it
> in the Python 0.9.3 time frame.  :)

Not me, although *someone* proposed it at least that early, perhaps at 0.9.1
already.  IIRC, that was the very first time Guido used the term
"hypergeneralization" in a cluck-cluck kind of public way.  That is,
sequences and mappings are different concepts in Python, and intentionally
so.  Don't know how he feels now.

But if you add seq.items(), you had better add seq.keys() too, and
seq.values() as a synonym for seq[:].  I guess the perceived advantage of
adding seq.items() is that it supplies yet another incredibly slow and
convoluted way to get at the for-loop index?  "Ah, that's the ticket!  Let's
allocate gazillabytes of storage and compute all the indexes into a massive
data structure up front, and then we can use the loop index that's already
sitting there for free anyway to index into that and get back a redundant
copy of itself!" <wink>.

not-a-good-sign-when-common-sense-is-offended-ly y'rs  - tim