[Python-Dev] A Horrible Inconsistency

[Tim Peters]

[Raymond Hettinger]
...
> Also, I'm not clear on the rationale for transforming negative
> repetition counts to zero instead of raising an exception.

There are natural use cases.  Here's one:  you have a string and want
to right-justify it to 80 columns with blanks if it's shorter than 80.

    s = " " * (80 - len(s)) + s

does the right thing in all cases, because the blank repetition
gracefully collapses to an empty string whenever len(s) >= 80.  I've
used that (and variants thereof) dozens of times.  Then again, I don't
believe I've ever used the "integer * sequence" form (i.e., with the
integer on the left).