best cumulative sum

Peter Otten __peter__ at web.de
Sat Nov 26 03:18:58 EST 2005


David Isaac wrote:

> "Peter Otten" <__peter__ at web.de> wrote in message
> news:dm3uj4$kko$02$1 at news.t-online.com...
>> I'd rather have a second look whether the test is really needed.
> 
> That's too obscure of a hint.
> Can you be a bit more explicit?
> Here's an example (below).
> You're saying I think that most of it is unnecessary.

>From the Zen of Python:
"Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules." 

I think that the test for an empty iterator makes ireduce() unintuitive. Try
asking someone who has not followed the discussion
what list(ireduce(add, [], 42)) might produce, given that

list(ireduce(add, [1], 42)) --> [43]
list(ireduce(add, [1, 2], 42)) --> [43, 45]
list(ireduce(add, [])) --> []
list(ireduce(add, [1])) --> [1]
list(ireduce(add, [1, 2])) --> [1, 3]

I suspect that [42] will be a minority vote.

Peter



More information about the Python-list mailing list