In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Roy Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, > "Diez B. Roggisch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>attribution missing: >>> >>> Also, I thought that part of the python philosophy was to allow any >>> sort of object in a list, and to allow the same methods to work with >>> whatever was in list. >> >> Not really. When the usual argument about the existence (and >> justification) of lists & tuples comes along, one common distinction is >> that >> >> - tuples contain arbitrary object of varying types, so they are kind >> of "records" >> - lists should contain uniform objects. > >I see absolutely nothing wrong with lists of heterogenous types. Or, for >that matter, iterators which generate heterogeneous types. Here's some >perfectly reasonable examples (equally applicable to lists or iterators): > >* The tokens parsed out of a file (ints, floats, identifiers, keywords, >various kinds of punctuation, etc) > >* The entries in a unix directory (plain files, directories, symlinks, >special files, named sockets, etc) > >* The vehicles going through a toll booth (cars, trucks, motorcycles) > >I don't see any reason you shouldn't be able to build lists of those things.
Overall agreed, but I think your reasoning breaks down when you talk about sorting such a list: generally speaking, when you create a list like that, it's because you specifically want to preserve ordering. The case where it's mostly like you'd want to sort (entries in a Unix directory), you can arguably reduce the discussion to string sorting quite easily. -- Aahz ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code." --Bill Harlan -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
