In article <w2dsif33j2k....@scooby-doo.csail.mit.edu>, alan@scooby- doo.csail.mit.edu says... > Even in a 64-bit Java, the _type_ returned by String.length() is > 'int', and is thus at most (2**31 - 1). This isn't a problem for > strings, which never get that long in practice, but for some other > Java datatypes (e.g., Buffer) it is a real problem. Score one for > untyped languages.
Still, assuming you have enough heap size, you can still create a 500 million character string buffer. That's one of a heck large buffer. Nearly twice the online encyclopedia Britannica(1), and roughly 50 times the longest novel ever produced (2). And considering you can always flush the buffer, I'm finding an hard time looking at unlimited string length in Python as wow factor. Even if we consider unicode strings. (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_comparisons#Comparison_of_en cyclopedias (2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_novels -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
