On Apr 11, 3:10 pm, "7stud" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Apr 11, 10:44 am, "Scott" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > As said before I'm new to programming, and I need in depth explaination to > > understand everything the way I want to know it, call it a personality quirk > > ;p. > > > With pop() you remove the last element of a list and return its value: > > > Now I know list is a bad name, but for the sake of arguement lets assume its > > not a built in sequence> > > > >>>list = ['this', 'is', 'an', 'example'] > > >>>list.pop() > > 'example' > > >>>list > > > ['this', 'is', 'an'] > > > I understand all that. What I don't understand is why all the documentation > > I see says, "When removing a specific element from a list using pop() it > > must be in this format: list.pop([i]). > > At first I took that to mean that list.pop(i) would return some type of > > error, but it doesn't. > > It's understandable that the definition of pop() is confusing in that > way. It looks like the argument should be a list. As others have > said, that is not what the brackets mean when the documents show the > formal definition of a function.
I wonder if the documentation could take advantage of Python 3000 annotation syntax. So pop([x]) would be replaced in the docs by pop(x: OPTIONAL) Just a thought, probably not a good one. The brackets are so pervasive that it's probably better to just let newbies be confused for a little bit. Carl Banks -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
