[Python-Dev] AC Derby and accepting None for optional positional arguments (original) (raw)

Terry Reedy tjreedy at udel.edu
Thu Jan 16 23:01:56 CET 2014

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 1:42 AM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:

itertools.repeat('a', -1) repeat('a', 0) itertools.repeat('a', times=-1) repeat('a') itertools.repeat('a', times=-2) repeat('a', -2)

The first line is correct in both behavior and representation. The second line behavior (and corresponding repr) are wrong. The third line repr is wrong but the behavior is like the first.

[1] http://bugs.python.org/issue19145

On 1/16/2014 1:42 PM, Guido van Rossum wrote:

If I had complete freedom in redefining the spec I would treat positional and keyword the same, interpret absent or None to mean "forever" and explicit negative integers to mean the same as zero, and make repr show a positional integer >= 0 if the repeat isn't None.

But I don't know if that's too much of a change.

I copied the unsnipped stuff above to a tracker message.

http://bugs.python.org/issue19145

-- Terry Jan Reedy

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