Counter Class -- Bag/Multiset
Terry Reedy
tjreedy at udel.edu
Fri Jan 23 04:10:20 EST 2009
bearophileHUGS at lycos.com wrote:
> Also: what's the rationale of allowing negative values too?
I can guess two:
1) Nuisance to check given that Python does not have a count (0,1,2...)
type.
2. Useful. + = items on hand; - = items back-ordered.
Bank account go negative also ;-). So does elevation.
Similarly, an app could set 0 to mean 'desired quantity on hand', so
non-zero count is surplus or deficit.
I might not have thought to allow this, but it seems to open new
applications. (This definitely makes bag or multiset inappropriate as
names.)
tjr
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