Terry Reedy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message > news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > (As an aside, may I point out that Python In A Nutshell states on page > > 46 "The result of S*n or n*S is the concatenation of n copies of S". > > It would be more exact to say that S*n is [] extended with S n times, > which makes it clear that 0*S == S*0 == [] and which avoids the apparently > misleading word 'copy'. I presume the C implementation is the equivalent
Considering that the very next (and final) sentence in that same paragraph is "If n is zero or less than zero, the result is an empty sequence of the same type as S", I don't think there's anything misleading in the quoted sentence. Moreover, since the paragraph is about sequences, not just lists, it *WOULD* be horribly wrong to use the phrasing you suggest: "bah!"*3 is NOT a list, it's EXACTLY the concatenation of three copies of that string -- no more, no less. > Or one could say that the result *is the same as* (not *is*) the I find this distinction, in this context, to be empty padding, with zero added value on ANY plane -- including the plane of "pedantry";-). > concatenation of n *shallow* copies of S. 'Shallow' means that each copy I do not think it would be good to introduce the concept of "shallow" at a point in the text which is talking about ALL sequences -- including ones, such as strings, for which it just does not apply. But, thanks for the suggestions, anyway! Alex -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
