Some basic newbie questions...

[Kent Johnson]

jonathan.beckett wrote:
  I'm just finding it a bit weird that some of the built in functions are
> static, rather than methods of objects (such as len() being used to
> find the length of a list).

Another explanation here:
http://effbot.org/pyfaq/why-does-python-use-methods-for-some-functionality-e-g-list-index-but-functions-for-other-e-g-len-list.htm

Kent