On Sep 24, 4:59 pm, Duncan Booth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: ... > I haven't yet had occasion to use LINQ in anger yet, so I have no idea > whether its an idea to love or to hate. I do think it is good that C# has > effectively sprouted list comprehensions (not to mention anonymous types > and type inferencing) and I expect there may be some aspects worth looking > at for Python but I think they are more likely to lead to itertools > functions than extensions to syntax.
My thoughts exactly when I first looked at it. "Hey C# NOW has list comprehensions!!! SWEET!!!" As I understand it LINQ is libraries(System.Data.Linq.dll, System.XML.Linq.dll) + syntactic sugar, i wouldn't call that a change to the language. The addition of lambdas and functions as first class objects however, that was indeed a language change, and it was a change for the better that makes LINQ possible, (also makes writing delegates less cumbersome). To someone other than a C# person, these features are not new or revolutionary, it's just C# catching up. Kudos to them for getting there before java. After some more thought on what might conceivably be missing from python that LINQ has, that someone might want is the equivalent of System.XML.Linq.dll, and I can't see any reason why someone couldn't write it with the exception that there doesn't seem to be a definitive XML lib for python, meaning generally regarded as the best. That in my mind would be a prerequisite. But if someone wrote both the XML lib with the LINQ-ish syntax, maybe it would become the definitive XML lib. Again, I personally don't see myself using XML and thus needing that unless my hand was forced by some business requirement that dictated I use XML, I would not use it if I had a choice. The SQL LiNQ-ish though, I think every python ORM has that covered to a degree, and I use that quite a bit. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
