Why Python does *SLICING* the way it does??

[Roy Smith]

Antoon Pardon <apardon at forel.vub.ac.be> wrote:

> Personnaly I would like to have the choice. Sometimes I prefer to
> start at 0, sometimes at 1 and other times at -13 or +7.

Argggh.  Having two (or more!) ways to do it, would mean that every time I 
read somebody else's code, I would have to figure out which flavor they are 
using before I could understand what their code meant.  That would be evil.

What would actually be cool is if Python were to support the normal math 
notation for open or closed intervals.  Any of the following would make 
sense:

foo = bar (1, 2)
foo = bar (1, 2]
foo = bar [1, 2)
foo = bar [1, 2]

That would certainly solve this particular problem, but the cost to the 
rest of the language syntax would be rather high :-)