[Python-Dev] List insert at index that is well out of range (original) (raw)

Harish Tech technews.full at gmail.com
Mon Sep 15 14:17:33 CEST 2014

Hi ,

 Sorry for that mistake . Now I have posted it in python-list mailing

list .

Thanks for your guidance.

Harish

On Mon, Sep 15, 2014 at 5:01 PM, Tal Einat <taleinat at gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Sep 15, 2014 at 6:18 AM, Harish Tech <technews.full at gmail.com> wrote: > I had a list > > a = [1, 2, 3] > > when I did > > a.insert(100, 100) > > [1, 2, 3, 100] > > as list was originally of size 4 and I was trying to insert value at index > 100 , it behaved like append instead of throwing any errors as I was trying > to insert in an index that did not even existed . > > > Should it not throw > > > IndexError: list assignment index out of range > > > exception as it throws when I attempt doing > > > a[100] = 100 > > Question : 1. Any idea Why has it been designed to silently handle this > instead of informing the user with an exception ? > > > Personal Opinion : Lets see how other dynamic languages behave in such a > situation : Ruby : > > > > a = [1, 2] > > > a[100] = 100 > > > a > > => [1, 2, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, > nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, > nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, > nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, > nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, > nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, > nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, 100] > > The way ruby handles this is pretty clear and sounds meaningful (and this is > how I expected to behave and it behaved as per my expectation) at least to > me . So what I felt was either it should throw exception or do the way ruby > handles it . > > > Is ruby way of handling not the obvious way ? > > I even raised it in stackoverflow > http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25840177/list-insert-at-index-that-is-well-out-of-range-behaves-like-append > > and got some responses .

Hello Harish, The appropriate place to ask questions like this is python-list [1], or perhaps Stack Overflow. If you meant to suggest changing the behavior of Python in such cases, you should first discuss this on python-list, and then post a clearly written suggestion to python-ideas [2]. This list, python-dev, is used for discussing the development of the Python language. See the "Python Mailing Lists" page [3] for more information. Regards, - Tal Einat ..[1]: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list ..[2]: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas ..[3]: https://www.python.org/community/lists/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/attachments/20140915/bf28af20/attachment.html>

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