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Cliff Wells logiplexsoftware at earthlink.net
Mon Apr 29 18:52:07 EDT 2002 
On Mon, 29 Apr 2002 18:37:19 -0400
Russo, Tom wrote:

> 
> > This PEP smacks of political requirements not practical ones. The
> > builtin name space is only crowded if we want to use the names for
> > something else.
> 
> I think that this hits the nail right on the head.  One of the reasons I
> like python is that it is friendly to functional programmers like myself.
> The goal of python _should not_ be to weed out "non-standard" features,
> which seems to be the goal of this PEP.  What python _should_ try to do (in
> my opinion at least) is take the best of all worlds, to the extent possible.
> The functions at issue here (with the possible exception of input) represent
> the best of functional programming integrated into python.  The fact that
> certain people never learned to program in the function idiom is no basis
> for removing them.

I am neither for nor against this PEP, but I'm wondering where this idea that
the PEP author wanted to *remove* funtionals came from.   He wants to put these
things in modules, not remove them.  In fact, he even suggested *adding*
additional functionals.


[from the PEP]
> The functionals (map, filter, and reduce) had greater importance prior
> to the introduction of list comprehensions which are now the preferred (and
> more readable) approach.  Reduce is easily (and more clearly) replaced by
> an equivalent for loop.  Limits on the number of built-in functions
> prevented the addition of other functionals which may have be useful
> when that style of programming is needed.  Creating a separate module allows
> room for a large variety of functionals (e.g. fold, head, tail, take,
> drop, etc.) to be introduced without cluttering the built-in namespace.


The only thing I've seen that he suggested removing was input().

-- 
Cliff Wells, Software Engineer
Logiplex Corporation (www.logiplex.net)
(503) 978-6726 x308  (800) 735-0555 x308
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