Pythonification of the asterisk-based collection packing/unpacking syntax

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, 19 Dec 2011 19:38:52 -0800, alex23 wrote:

> On Dec 20, 7:57 am, Andrew Berg <bahamutzero8... at gmail.com> wrote:
>> But what about the example he gave about being logged into a customer's
>> machine with only ed available? I suppose such fools would not be
>> worthy of your business.
> 
> Do you mean directly editing the source code on a production machine?
> Because that's pretty much the only scenario I can come up with where
> that's plausible.
>
> If I was doing that, _I_ wouldn't be worth doing business with.
> 
> So you only have ssh & ed: at the very least you should be making
> changes against your local copy, TESTING THEM, and then copy&paste
> directly onto the remote box.

Come on guys, you're treating a throw-away example *way* too seriously.

If we're going to hypothesis a customer so insane to only have ed 
installed on their system[1], chances are they've specified some crazy 
rule like "You May Not Copy Our Precious, Precious Source Code Onto 
Another Machine Because That's Copyright Theft". Or whatever. Spend 15 
minutes on The Daily WTF and you'll see war stories far more crazy than 
that.

The point I was making is that in the real world, sometimes you don't 
have the luxury of using the right tool for the job, but have to make do 
with whatever you have. Languages shouldn't depend on advanced editor 
features or special keyboards -- that way leads to ColorForth and APL.



[1] Possibly because ed is the standard Unix editor.
http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed.msg.html


-- 
Steven