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Python's simplicity philosophy

Mel Wilson mwilson at the-wire.com
Wed Nov 19 21:33:15 EST 2003 
In article <slrnbro6ij.rtu.bignose-hates-spam at iris.polar.local>,
Ben Finney <bignose-hates-spam at and-benfinney-does-too.id.au> wrote:
>On 19 Nov 2003 17:20:10 -0800, Paul Rubin wrote:
>> "A.M. Kuchling" <amk at amk.ca> writes:
>>> [the Unix command] uniq doesn't report an error if its input isn't
>>> sorted.
>>
>> Maybe it should.  If its behavior on unsorted input isn't specified,
>> you shouldn't assume it will act in any particular way.
>
>The specification on the man page for GNU uniq seems clear on this:
>
>    DESCRIPTION
>        Discard  all  but  one  of successive identical lines from INPUT
>        (or standard input), writing to OUTPUT (or standard output).
>
>It doesn't care if the input is sorted or unsorted; it describes
>behaviour on successive identical lines, not the total set of all lines.

   It doesn't care if the input is sorted ascending or
descending, and it doesn't go to a lot of extra trouble to
check whether the order is monotonic.

        Regards.        Mel.
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