String.join revisited (URGENT for 1.6)

[Aahz Maruch]

[cc'd to Guido for his delectation upon vacation return]

In article <03062000.1 at sanctum.jae.ddns.org>,
Juergen A. Erhard <jae at ilk.de> wrote:
>
>It would seem (at least to me) to be the nicest (and cleanest) design
>to be able to do:
>
>   "some string".split().join()

That's what some people advocate, but that's semantically equivalent to
allowing [].join().  As has been pointed out several times, adding a
join() method to sequence types is a Bad Idea.

So far, nobody has pointed out *ANY* disadvantages of retaining the
current string.join() mechanism, with one exception: it destroys the
"orthogonality" of moving all string functions to string methods.  Given
that various people have demonstrated that join() has disadvantages as a
method for both string or sequence types, I think maintaining the 1.5.2
status quo is probably the best option.
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