On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 12:44 PM, Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 4:36 AM, Ian Kelly <ian.g.ke...@gmail.com> wrote: >> I don't object to changing the join method (one of the more >> shoe-horned string methods) back into a function, but to my eyes >> you've got the arguments backward. It should be: >> >> def join(sep, iterable): return sep.join(iterable) > > Trouble is, it makes some sense either way. I often put the larger > argument first - for instance, I would write 123412341324*5 rather > than the other way around - and in this instance, it hardly seems as > clear-cut as you imply. But the function can't be written to take them > in either order, because strings are iterable too. (And functions that > take args either way around aren't better than those that make a > decision.)
The reason I like having the shorter argument first (at least for function calls) is for when I'm reading the code. If I'm interested in the second argument, then to find it I have to scan over the first argument. I would rather scan over something short like '\n' than something longer like a list comprehension. It sounds like a trivial thing, but it really does make it easier to find where an expression starts and ends when the expression is short. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
