python needs leaning stuff from other language

[Mel]

Steven D'Aprano wrote:

> On Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:41:10 -0400, Mel wrote:
> 
>> Ben Finney wrote:
>> 
>>> I think it would also be better to have One (and prefereably Only One)
>>> Obvious Way To Do It. That obvious way, for those who work with
>>> Python's ‘set’ and ‘dict’, is a ‘clear’ method. It seems best to have
>>> ‘list’ conform with this also.
>> 
>> Does that mean a one-off special case rule to forbid slices having a
>> default?
> 
> Why would it do that?

Well, if list.clear were truly and strictly to be the only way to clear the 
contents of a list, then assigning nothing via the default slice would have 
to be ruled out.  `somelist[:] = []` is just a special case of assignment to 
a slice generally.

	Mel.