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Subject: Re: Implicit conversion to boolean in if and while statements
From: Rick Johnson <rantingrickjohnson@gmail.com>
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Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.python:38417

On Monday, July 16, 2012 11:18:28 PM UTC-5, Devin Jeanpierre wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 12:03 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> > On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 22:15:13 -0400, Devin Jeanpierre wrote:
> >
> >> For example, instead of "if stack:" or "if bool(stack):", we could use
> >> "if stack.isempty():". This line tells us explicitly that stack is a
> >> container.
> >
> > isempty is not a container method.
>=20
> Your entire reply is predicated on this idea that I was talking about
> writing classes with this extra "isempty" method.

Steven's adherence to this implicit conversion is warping his comprehension=
 of your words. He is so accustomed to "guessing" that it has become second=
 nature for him.

> No. I was talking about having "isempty" be part of the collection
> interface, and eliminating polymorphic bool conversion.

Which i believe is a great idea!=20

GvR has always been reluctant to incorporate full OOP machinery for some re=
ason. I am not suggesting that Python be 100% OOP, HELL NO! But collections=
 should have had an "isempty" method from the beginning. But the same argum=
ent could be made against len, any, all, etc...

But now we are opening a whole bag of cats. What about hasattr, getattr, se=
tattr, type, dir, id, isinstance, issubclass, and many more that could be i=
nherited directly from object; and they should be!

On the flip side i do believe int, float, str, tuple, list, dict... should =
remain as built-ins, and the obvious: help, input, globals, locals, vars, p=
rint, etc...=20

Python has too many built-ins. I think we need a PyWart on this subject.