[Python-Dev] Iterable String Redux (aka String ABC)

[Antoine Pitrou]

Georg Brandl <g.brandl <at> gmx.net> writes:
> I'd argue that "find" is more primitive than "split" -- split is intuitively
> implemented using find and slicing, but implementing find using split and
> len is unintuitive.  (Of course, "index" can be used instead of "find".)

I meant semantically primitive. I think the difference between a String and a
plain Sequence is that, in a String, the existence and relative position of
substrings has a meaning. This is true for character strings but it can also be
true for other kinds of strings (think genome strings, they are usually
represented using ASCII letters but it's out of convenience - they could be made
of opaque objects instead).

That's why, in string classes, you have methods like split() to deal with the
processing of substrings - which you do not have on lists, not that's it more
difficult to implement or algorithmically less efficient, but because it makes
no point.

Well I hope it makes at least a bit of sense :-)

Regards

Antoine.