[Python-Dev] set.copy documentation string (original) (raw)

Noam Raphael noamraph at gmail.com
Thu Dec 29 00:31:44 CET 2005

On 12/29/05, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:

Noam Raphael wrote: > is currently "Return a shallow copy of a set." > > Perhaps "shallow" should be removed, since set members are supposed to > be immutable so there's no point in a deep copy?

That still doesn't make copy return a deep copy, right? "shallow copy" is more precise than "copy", and correct - what is gained from removing it?

Perhaps it bothers the programmer with something that shouldn't bother him. I mean that I might do help(set.copy), and then think, "Oh, it returns a shallow copy. Wait a minute - 'shallow' means that I get a new object, which references the same objects as the old one. Perhaps I should use another function, which does deep copying? Let me think about it - no. All members of a set are immutable, so it doesn't matter." I think that in this case, the fact that the copy is shallow is an implementation detail, since there's no sense in making a deep copy of a set. Implementation details should probably not be a part of the definition of what a method does.

I know it's just a word, and that it doesn't matter a lot. But why not make things a tiny bit better?

Noam

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