* Devin Jeanpierre <jeanpierr...@gmail.com> [110925 16:37]: > > Why does it suck? > > The gist of what I was saying is that it's possible to define > functions that do this "generically" so that one implementation of > zfill can work with multiple implementations of strings.
That is kind of 'spot on' for me. Before I started using python, I worked in rebol - where (at that time), there was a limited number of function names available because of limited namespacing (and the binary was a fraction the size of python). So I learned to take that approach. > Having to > reimplement every time when one implementation would do is bothersome > and generally isn't done unless it has to be (thus why mmap lacks a > zfill method). Having to do more work than necessary "sucks", as does > having partial str implementations that don't do everything str does. > > Ideally, I would claim that if some interface will have multiple > implementations, it should have as few methods as possible to make > implementation as easy as possible, and move as much as possible > _away_ from methods and into functions that work with arbitrary > implementations of the interface. This minimizes the amount of work > that must be done for implementors and thus makes life better. > > It's also true that it's "bad practice" to have objects with large > APIs, not for convenience reasons but because it increases object > coupling, something that "good" object oriented design seeks to > eliminate. The idea there is that the less ways you can have your > object interacted with / interact with other objects, the easier it is > to think of the way state flows. I agree with this in principle, but > it doesn't really matter for strings. > > The situation I see with something like zfill as-a-method is that it > has nearly negligible benefit (less imports vs function?) and some > detriment. So I would conclude it should not exist. Other people look > at this differently. Good response. Thank you. -- Tim tim at tee jay forty nine dot com or akwebsoft dot com http://www.akwebsoft.com -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
