[Python-Dev] PEP for adding an sq_index slot so that any object, a or b, can be used in X[a:b] notation (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Mon Feb 13 19:52:03 CET 2006

On 2/10/06, Mark Russell <mrussell at verio.net> wrote:

On 10 Feb 2006, at 12:45, Nick Coghlan wrote: An alternative would be to call it "discrete", as that is the key characteristic of an indexing type - it consists of a sequence of discrete values that can be isomorphically mapped to the integers. Another alternative: asordinal. Wikipedia describes ordinals as "numbers used to denote the position in an ordered sequence" which seems a pretty precise description of the intended result. The "as" prefix also captures the idea that this should be a lossless conversion.

Aren't ordinals generally assumed to be non-negative? The numbers used as slice or sequence indices can be negative!

Also, I don't buy the reason for 'as'l I don't see how this word would require the conversion to be losless.

The PEP continues to use index and I'm happy with that.

-- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

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