[Python-Dev] Re: PEP 292 - Simpler String Substitutions (original) (raw)

Raymond Hettinger python at rcn.com
Mon Aug 23 18:54:33 CEST 2004

This code-snippet is littered everwhere in my applications:

string.join([str(x) for x in iterable]) Its tedious and makes code hard to read. Do we need a PEP to fix this?

A PEP would be overkill.

Still, it would be helpful to do PEP-like things such as reference implementation, soliticing comments, keep an issue list, etc.

A minor issue is that the implementation automatically shifts to Unicode upon encountering a Unicode string. So you would need to test for this before coercing to a string.

Also, join works in multiple passes. The proposal should be specific about where stringizing occurs. IIRC, you need the object length on the first pass, but the error handling and switchover to Unicode occur on the second.

Raymond

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