[Python-Dev] Re: PEP 279 revisited (original) (raw)

Alex Martelli aleax@aleax.it
Wed, 24 Apr 2002 16:25:39 +0200

On Wednesday 24 April 2002 03:37 pm, Neil Schemenauer wrote:

Greg Ewing wrote: > There doesn't seem to be any single English word that > captures all of what we mean without ambiguity.

How about "indices"? You use a key to get things out of dictionaries. You use an index to get things out of sequences. "indices" is the pural of index.

Yes, but it's a noun, not a verb. Again, I don't understand why this type's name should be a verb, but apparently that's the Decision -- we're only being consulted on "which verb".

Apart from this, "indices" suggests you're getting ONLY indices -- while when you iterate on this type you get indices AND contents.

In other words, name "indices" might be fine for a hypothetical different type, for usage such as:

for i in indices(mysequence):
    x = mysequence[i]
    # etc

rather than the current:

for i in xrange(len(mysequence)):
    x = mysequence[i]
    # etc

but the type RH and I implemented (not without help from GvR in fixing the mess I'd made of GC &c:-) is to be used differently:

for i, x in mysterynamegoeshere(mysequence_or_other_iterator):
    # just the etc -- x, the i-th value, is already in hand

Alex