[Pythonmac-SIG] Missing orthogonal functions

[Michael Hudson]

AFAICT, this has nothing to do with Macs.

Dan Grassi <dan@grassi.org> writes:

>  From an orthogonal viewpoint operations of lists and dictionaries
>  that could be orthogonal but are not include: x.copy() and x.append().

Pff!  Dictionaries and lists are *different*!

> Obtaining a copy
> 	In the case of dictionaries there is the d.copy() function but
> 	this is not available for lists, instead rather obscure syntax
> 	is used: l.[:].  This is confusing for new python coders, a
> 	l.copy() function is more intuitive.

There's the copy module for this.

Would you propose adding a do-nothing .copy() method to tuples?

> Adding a value
> 	For dictionaries d[n] = v is available but this is not always
> 	viable as in lambda functions in a map operation and list
> 	comprehension can not be used in all cases.
>
> 	Doesn't work:
> 		map(lambda n, v: d[n] = v, names, vars)
> 	
> 	Instead something like this must be done:
> 		td = {}
> 		map(lambda n, v: td.setdefault(n, v), names, vars)
> 		d.update(td}
>
> 	What would be nice:
> 		map(lambda n, v: d.set(n, v), names, vars)
> 	Or for a more orthogonality
> 		map(lambda n, v: d.append(n, v), names, vars)

for name, var in zip(names, vars):
    d[name] = var

> Does this make sense?

No more than the zillion times this stuff has been discussed on
comp.lang.python...

learn-to-love-the-return-key-ly y'rs,
M.

-- 
81. In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living
    definition of the word "frustration".
  -- Alan Perlis, http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html