[NEWBIE] Sequence indices & method docstrings

[Erik Max Francis]

Paul-Michael Agapow wrote:

> The first concerns sequence indices.  It seems to me there are two
> different ways in which they work. Under simple use (myList[4],
> myList[-1]) via __getitem__ and __setitem__ the allowable keys are
> [-len...len-1] where negative numbers wrap around to the end of the
> sequence. This also applies to slice notation. However insert()
> interprets any negative indice as a prepend and any indice >= len as
> an
> append. This _seems_ inconsistent to me. What's the rational or model
> behind this?

The Python FAQ has an entry (4.58) on this.  See (the www.python.org Web
site appears to be down at the moment, so here's a mirror):

    http://www.cs.tu-berlin.de/usr/python/doc/FAQ.html#4.58

> Point the second: in a set of container classes I'm implementing, I
> have
> some synonym methods, i.e. methods with different names that just call
> the other implemented function. Ideally, these should share the same
> docstring, but instead of just copying it, I thought it would be easy
> to
> just put in:
	...
>    def enqueue (self, item):
>       __class__.push.__doc__
	...

I'm pretty sure that the docstrings have to be string literals, so
there's no way to do this in-class.

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 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
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