[Python-Dev] PEP 326 (quick location possibility) (original) (raw)

Tim Peters tim.one at comcast.net
Wed Jan 28 22:31:33 EST 2004

[Josiah Carlson]

... If there is a core Python developer who thinks that this functionality should be included with Python (accessable via some method on a builtin, name, attribute, etc.), I'm sure we'd like to hear from you.

It doesn't appear to matter any more, but I did. It's not needed often enough to be a builtin, and ideas for confusing the existing meanings of min() and max() were rightfully dead on arrival, so finding a sensible place for sensible names is a real problem. The functionality of "a biggest" and "a smallest" object is A-OK by me, though, and something I'd use.

Indeed, I had a bug within the past few years in a find-the-minimum search loop, using an initial value 10x larger than anything I thought I'd ever see. A few months later, the inputs in one case happened all to be larger than that, so it returned the bogus initial value as if it were a sensible result. Hilarity ensued. There are few enough bugs in my code at this age that I take very seriously any principled gimmick that could prevent repeating one. One thing I haven't needed is an object guaranteed to compare "bewteen" any two others .

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