[Python-ideas] string codes & substring equality

[Guido van Rossum]

On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 3:42 PM, Andrew Barnert <abarnert at yahoo.com> wrote:

> On Nov 28, 2013, at 22:49, Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
>
> spir wrote:
>
> (But then, possibly, some would wonder why this new ord(s,i) is not a
> string method ;-)
>
>
> For the same reason that the existing ord() function isn't
> a string method, whatever that is!
>
>
>
> http://docs.python.org/2/faq/design.html#why-does-python-use-methods-for-some-functionality-e-g-list-index-but-functions-for-other-e-g-len-list
>
> The short version is: historical reasons, and no reason to change it
> compelling enough to be worth the costs in backward compat, bikeshedding,
> etc.
>

That FAQ entry does not do the real motivation justice. While OO "purists"
may argue about it, to me it's obvious that in quite a few cases the
function spelling is more readable than the method spelling. I found it
more readable 23 years ago, and I still find it more readable today. So
it's not historical reasons to me, even if not everybody agrees (obviously
:-).

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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