[Python-Dev] string.find() again (was Re: timsort for jython)

[Guido van Rossum]

[SteveH]
> While I understand perfectly well the pragmatic case for this
> change, it appears to blur the borders between set membership and
> subsetting; if it's so desirable, why didn't the need arise
> earlier?.

Couldn't be done before __contains__ was a separately overloadable
operator.  That's relatively recent (Python 2.0).  And playing with it
in innovative ways is even more recent (Python 2.2, for "has_key").
But the satisfaction that spelling "has_key" as "in" gives me suggests
that there's more potential to it.

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