On 2020-05-06 12:48 p.m., Christopher Barker wrote:
On Tue, May 5, 2020 at 5:43 PM Steven D'Aprano <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Christopher's quoting is kinda messed up and I can't be bothered
fixing
it, sorry, so you'll just have to guess who said what :-)
Ideally, we are evaluating ideas independently of who expressed them,
so I'll pretend I did that on purpose :-)
First: really people, it's all been said. I think we all (and I DO
include myself in that) have fallen into the trap that "if folks don't
agree with me, I must not have explained myself well enough" -- but in
this case, we actually do disagree. And not really on the facts, just
on the relative importance.
But since, I apparently did not explain myself well enough in this case:
> no -- but we could (and I think should) have a ternary flag, so that
> zip_longest becomes unnecessary. And we'd never get to eight
combinations:
> you can't have longest and shortest behavior at the same time!
A ternary flag of strict = True, False or what?
Come on:
ternary: having three elements, parts, or divisions
(https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ternary)
did you really not know that? (and "flag" does not always mean
"boolean flag", even thoughit often does
(https://techterms.com/definition/flag) )
(by the way, I'm posting those references because I looked them up to
make sure I wasn't using terms incorrectly)
This has been proposed multiple times on this list:
a flag that takes three possible values: "shortest" | "longest" |
"equal" (defaulting to shortest of course). Name to be bikeshed later :-)
(and enum vs string also to be bikeshed later)
how about "length"?
length=True # longest
length=False # shortest (default)
length=None # equal
(altho I still think the "YAGNI function" system would be better >.>)
This demonstrates why the "constant flag" is so often an
antipattern. It
doesn't scale past two behaviours. Or you end up with a series of
flags:
zip(*iterators, strict=False, longest=False, fillvalue=None)
I don't think anyone proposed an API like that -- yes, that would be
horrid.
There are all sorts of reasons why a ternary flag would not be good,
but I do think it should be mentioned in the PEP, even if only as a
rejected idea.
But I still like it, 'cause the "flag for two behaviors and another
function for the third" seem sliek the worse of all options.
-CHB
--
Christopher Barker, PhD
Python Language Consulting
- Teaching
- Scientific Software Development
- Desktop GUI and Web Development
- wxPython, numpy, scipy, Cython
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