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Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2012 18:38:44 -0500
From: Tim Chase <python.list@tim.thechases.com>
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To: Ethan Furman <ethan@stoneleaf.us>
Subject: Re: dbf.py API question concerning Index.index_search()
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On 08/15/12 18:26, Ethan Furman wrote:
>    .index_search(
>       match,
>       start=None,
>       stop=None,
>       nearest=False,
>       partial=False )
> 
> The defaults are to search the entire index for exact matches and raise
> NotFoundError if it can't find anything.
> 
> The question is what should the return value be?
> 
> I don't like the usual pattern of -1 meaning not found (as in
> 'nothere'.find('a')), so I thought a fun and interesting way would be to
> subclass long and override the __nonzero__ method to return True/False
> based on whether the (partial) match was found.  The main problems I see
> here is that the special return value reverts to a normal int/long if
> anything is done to it (adding, subtracting, etc), and the found status
> is lost.
> 
> The other option is returning a (number, bool) tuple -- safer, yet more
> boring... ;)


I'm not quite sure I follow...you start off by saying that it will
"raise NotFoundError" if it can't find anything.  So if it finds
something, just return it.  Because if it found the item, it gives
it to you; if it didn't find the item, it raised an error.  That
sounds like a good (easy to understand) interface, similar to how
string.index() works.

-tkc