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

[Gordon McMillan]

On 6 Aug 2002 at 7:44, Guido van Rossum wrote:

> > So whether '' in 'abc' will work or not is a red
> > herring. The real issue is that membership gets
> > conflated with subsetting.
> 
> Well, in current Python you can only safely make
> that transformation when you're damn sure that char
> is a string of length one, otherwise you'd risk a
> TypeError. So this code (if correct) will continue
> to work, assuming you're not cathing TypeError
> (which is often an assumption when we say that a new
> feature "won't break old code"). 

I agree that x in str meaning "subset of" is more
intuitive. I believe you are correct (at least most
old code will still work), but this one makes me
uneasy (I admit possibly because x in str has
always made me uneasy).

And finally, I vote that testing for subset should
work in the mathematically correct way (when
testing for the empty subset). This does not
affect your argument. (In fact, Tim is arguing to
have half[1] the code that catches TypeErrors
continue to work, while the other half doesn't.)

'Nuff said.

-- Gordon
http://www.mcmillan-inc.com/

[1]No, probably not by lines of code.