[Python-ideas] PEP 428: poll about the joining syntax

[Ethan Furman]

Georg Brandl wrote:
> Am 12.10.2012 14:45, schrieb Blake Hyde:
>> I'm a Python developer rather than a developer of Python, but I'd like to ask a
>> question about this option (and implicitly vote against it, I suppose); if you
>> specialize a method name, such as .pathjoin, aren't you implying that methods
>> must be unambiguous even across types and classes?  This seems negative.  Even
>> if .join is already used for strings, it also makes sense for this use case.
> 
> Of course different classes can have methods of the same name.
> 
> The issue here is that due to the similarity (and interchangeability) of path
> objects and strings it is likely that people get them mixed up every now and
> then, and if .join() works on both objects the failure mode (strange result
> from str.join when you expected path.join) is horribly confusing.

I don't understand the "horribly confusing" part.  Sure, when I got them 
mixed up and ended up with a plain ol' string instead of a really cool 
Path it took a moment to figure out where I had made the error, but the 
traceback of "AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'path'" left 
absolutely no room for confusion as to what the problem was.

~Ethan~