[Python-Dev] Lukewarm about range literals (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido@beopen.com
Mon, 28 Aug 2000 19:33:01 -0500

> Charles wrote: > When I was a complete Python newbie (back around 1994) I thought that > the syntax > > l2 = l1[:] > > for copying lists looked pretty mysterious and weird. But after > spending some time programming Python I've come to think that the > slice syntax is perfectly natural. Should constructs be banned from > the language simply because they might confuse newbies?

Greg writes: Well, it is the reason we switched from Perl to Python in our software engineering course...

And the original proposal for range literals also came from the Numeric corner of the world (I believe Paul Dubois first suggested it to me).

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.pythonlabs.com/~guido/)