tuples, index method, Python's design

[Steve Holden]

Antoon Pardon wrote:
> On 2007-04-12, Carsten Haese <carsten at uniqsys.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, 2007-04-12 at 14:10 +0000, Antoon Pardon wrote:
>>> People are always defending duck-typing in this news group and now python
>>> has chosen to choose the option that makes duck-typing more difficult.
>> Au contraire! The "inconsistent" behavior of "in" is precisely what
>> duck-typing is all about: Making the operator behave in a way that makes
>> sense in its context.
> 
> No it isn't. Ducktyping is about similar objects using a similar
> interface to invoke similar behaviour and getting similar result.
> 
> So that if you write a function you don't concern yourself with
> the type of the arguments but depend on the similar behaviour.
> 
Please note that "similar" does not mean "exact".

The behavior of str.__contains__ and list.__contains__ is similar.

Duck-typing allows natural access to polymorphism. You appear to be 
making semantic distinctions merely for the sake of continuing this 
rather fatuous thread.

> Suppose someone writes a function that acts on a sequence.
> The algorithm used depending on the following invariant.
> 
>   i = s.index(e) => s[i] = e
> 
> Then this algorithm is no longer guaranteed to work with strings.
> 
Because strings have different properties than other sequences. I can't 
help pointing out that your invariant is invalid for tuples also, 
because tuples don't have a .index() method.

> 
> On the other hand I subclass list and add a sub method
> to check for the argument being a sublist of the object.
> Now I write a function that depends on this functionality.
> But although strings have the functionality I can't use
> them as argument because the functionality is invoked
> in a different way.
> 
>> Nobody seems to be complaining about "+" behaving
>> "inconsistently" depending on whether you're adding numbers or
>> sequences.
> 
> You are wrong. I already mentioned problems with it. The
> problem is that there are structures that are numbers and
> sequences at the same time. So I have a choice. Either I
> overload the "+" to get an addition or to get a concatanation.
> 
> In the first case I can't trust my structure to work with
> functions that expect a general sequence because they
> may depend on the fact that "+" concatenates. In the
> other case I can't trust my structure to work with
> numbers because they may depend on the fact that "+"
> behaves like an addition.
> 
Good grief.
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