copysort patch, was RE: [Python-Dev] inline sort option
Ian Bicking
ianb at colorstudy.com
Mon Oct 20 15:14:48 EDT 2003
On Monday, October 20, 2003, at 01:22 PM, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>> I want the functionality -- any sensible name that might let the
>> functionality into the standard library would be ok by me (so
>> would one putting the functionality in as a builtin or as an instance
>> method of lists, actually, but I _do_ believe those would not be
>> the best places for this functionality, by far). I hope the "tools
>> package" idea and/or the classmethod one find favour...!-)
>
> I'm still unclear why this so important to have in the library when
> you can write it yourself in two lines.
Probably "there should only be one way to do something." It's
something that is recreated over and over, mostly the same way but
sometimes with slight differences (e.g., copy-and-sort versus
sort-in-place). Like dict() growing keyword arguments, a copy/sort
method (function, classmethod, whatever) will standardize something
that is very commonly reimplemented. Another analogs might be True and
False (which before being built into Python may have been spelled
true/false, TRUE/FALSE, or just 0/1). These don't add any real
features, but they standardize these simplest of idioms.
I think I've seen people in this thread say that they've written Big
Python Programs, and they didn't have any problem with this -- but this
is a feature that's most important for Small Python Programs. Defining
a sort() function becomes boilerplate when you write small programs.
Or alternatively you create some util module that contains these little
functions, which becomes like a site.py only somewhat more explicit. A
util module feels like boilerplate as well, because it is a module
without any conceptual integrity, shared between projects only for
convenience, or not shared as it grows organically. "from util import
sort" just feels like cruft-hiding, not real modularity.
--
Ian Bicking | ianb at colorstudy.com | http://blog.ianbicking.org
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