[Python-Dev] Re: Dafanging the find() gotcha

[Andrew Koenig]

Michael> I think this is an extremely unconvincing example. You have
Michael> pushed the API up to the user of a program and supposed that
Michael> they expect the behavior which you are trying to defend. In
Michael> practice, what users expect in cases where a field is left
Michael> blank is for that field to be IGNORED, not for it to be
Michael> processed, but its contents treated as containing an empty
Michael> string.

I understand.  My point is that in this particular example, what the
user perceives as ignoring the request is obtained by the
implementation technique of treating it as an empty string.  The user
doesn't have to know about this implementation technique, of course.


-- 
Andrew Koenig, ark@research.att.com, http://www.research.att.com/info/ark