[Python-Dev] string representation of range in 3.0 (original) (raw)

Brad Miller bonelake at gmail.com
Wed Apr 16 16:11:27 CEST 2008

On Apr 16, 2008, at 5:15 AM, Armin Rigo wrote:

Hi Greg,

On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 03:34:44PM +1200, Greg Ewing wrote:

That's why I proposed <0, 1, ..., 9> for repr(range(10)).

My worry is that this will lead a newcomer into thinking this is some kind of valid expression syntax. What about the less confusing and more readily generalizable: <range object 0, 1, ..., 9> It would also be helpful IMHO to use this kind of repr for most built-in iterators and iterables, instead of their mosty-useless default repr.

I think this is a great compromise. It is much more helpful to the
beginner than range(0,10). This would also be a very simple change to
the patch I already made :-)

I think it works nicely for the dict_keys, dict_values, and dict_items
objects also as the student will see:

<dict_items object ('a', 1), ('b', 2), ... >

This reinforces that they will be iterating over tuples, which is much
more helpful than a hexadecimal address.

Since ordering is not important for dictionary objects I wonder
whether the ending value(s) are even needed or whether the first two
are enough to help the student get an idea of what the object contains.

Brad

A bientot, Armin.

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