I strongly dislike Python 3

Terry Reedy tjreedy at udel.edu
Sat Jun 26 19:27:15 EDT 2010


On 6/26/2010 2:55 PM, Peter Kleiweg wrote:

PSF is funding work on the email module. Problems with cgi and other 
internet interfacing modules are the main topic of discussion on py-dev 
this week.

> Some basic text string functions seem to be working on byte
> string functions as well, but sometimes they don't, and there's
> no rhyme in why it does or doesn't.
>
>      >>>  'abcd'[0] == 'abcd'[:1]
>      True
>      >>>  b'abcd'[0] == b'abcd'[:1]
>      False
>
> Why????

The bytes behavior is the normal behavior for sequences. Indexing 
produces an element of the sequence (in this case an int) while slicing 
produce a subseqeunce of the sequence, which is different from an 
element of the sequence. Try the same with tuples, lists, and ranges.

Strings are anomalous in that indexing produces a subsequence instead of 
an element (char in this case, which Guido chose for Python not to have).
-- 
Terry Jan Reedy




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