[Python-Dev] Let's stop eating exceptions in dict lookup

[Armin Rigo]

Hi Fredrik,

On Tue, May 30, 2006 at 12:23:04AM +0200, Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> well, the empty string is a valid substring of all possible strings 
> (there are no "null" strings in Python).  you get the same behaviour 
> from slicing, the "in" operator, "replace" (this was discussed on the 
> list last week), "count", etc.
> 
> if you're actually searching for a *non-empty* string, find() will 
> always return -1 sooner or later.

I know this.  These corner cases are debatable and different answers
could be seen as correct, as I think is the case for find().  My point
was different: I was worrying that the recent change in str.find() would
needlessly send existing and working programs into infinite loops, which
can be a particularly bad kind of failure for some applications.

At least, it gave a 100% performance loss on the benchmark I was trying
to run :-)


A bientot,

Armin.