max(), sum(), next()

[Luis Zarrabeitia]

Quoting Mensanator <mensanator at aol.com>:

> Actualy, I already get the behaviour I want. sum([1,None])
> throws an exception. I don't see why sum([]) doesn't throw
> an exception also 

If you take a "start value" and add to it every element of a list, should the
process fail if the list is empty? If you don't add anything to the start value,
you should get back the start value.

Python's sum is defined as sum(sequence, start=0). If sum were to throw an
exception with sum([]), it should also throw it with sum([], start=0), wich
makes no sense. 

-- 
Luis Zarrabeitia
Facultad de Matemática y Computación, UH
http://profesores.matcom.uh.cu/~kyrie