namespace issue?

[Remco Gerlich]

Pierre Fortin <pfortin at pfortin.com> wrote in comp.lang.python:
> Michael Powe wrote:
> > So now the question is, 'why'?  Am I misusing the string.find()
> > function? Okay, string.find() returns -1 when the string is not found,
> > which would seem to be what I expected, a false result.  Maybe python
> > doesn't treat -1 as false?  Well, I'll try being explicit and testing
> > for -1 return.  I probably have just confused myself hopelessly.
> 
> Sometimes -1 is used for failure; BUT -1 is NOT false...  in those cases, you
> can simply add 1 to the return to force a failure to return 0 (false)...

Eek, how unobvious.

I like

if s.find("bla") != -1:

a lot better than

if s.find("bla")+1:

The second one takes two steps to understand, in my mind.

-- 
Remco Gerlich