[Python-ideas] Add list.join() please

[David Mertz]

On Mon, Jan 28, 2019 at 8:44 PM Jamesie Pic <jpic at yourlabs.org> wrote:

> ['cancel', name].join('_')
>

This is a frequent suggestion.  It is also one that makes no sense
whatsoever if you think about Python's semantics.  What would you expect to
happen with this line:

['foo', b'foo', 37, re.compile('foo')].join('_')

 List are not restricted to containing only strings (or things that are
string-like enough that they might play well with joining).  Growing a
method that pertains only to that specialized sort of list breaks the
mental model of Python.  Moreover, there is no way to TELL if a particular
list is a "list of strings" other than checking each item inside it (unlike
in many languages).

-- 
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from the bellies of the hungry; books from the hands of the
uneducated; technology from the underdeveloped; and putting
advocates of freedom in prisons.  Intellectual property is
to the 21st century what the slave trade was to the 16th.
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