Discussion on: What is the most confusing thing to you in Python?

[Mathieu PATUREL]

Let's not do that with PHP or JavaScript, otherwise it'll never end :smile:

For the string.join, it makes sense, although both choice (string.join or list.join) have inconvenient.

If you look at every single str methods (.title(), .lower(), .format(), .strip(), it returns a new string. It never mutate the original one.

For the list objects, it's the opposite. It always mutates the original list, and always returns None.

So, if they implemented the .join() method on the list objects, they would have had to break this "convention". If they didn't, this would have append:

>>> lines = ['first', 'second', 'third']
>>> lines.join(' ')
>>> lines
'first second third'

(I'm not even sure it's possible change the type of an existing object)

So, the choice they made doesn't break any conventions and is logic, although it might not be the prettiest. IMHO, it's right choice. And in the zen's opinion too, I guess:

Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.

(guess they didn't respect this one for your last example though).

Good post anyway, learned something about python's int, thanks! :+1:

[Florian Rohrer]

Wow, thank you for your elaborate response! :)

[Nicolas B.]

Python does not forbid many things so try this:

class Hello:
  def __init__(self, z):
    self.z = z

  def do(self):
    print('Hello {}'.format(self.z))


class SeeYou:
  def __init__(self, z):
    self.z = z

  def do(self):
    print('See you {}'.format(self.z))

y = Hello('world')
y.do()
y.__class__ = SeeYou
y.do()

[Mathieu PATUREL]

:smiley: Never thought of this before... That's cool! Thanks!