Python is getting on my nerves :: semicomplete.com

Python is getting on my nerves

Posted Tue, 02 May 2006

Add lacking dynamic assignment ability to my "I wish Python had Foo" list.

Python does not appear to have dynamically assignable arrays. Where are we, C? Assembly? When I assign past the end of the array, I mean resize the god damned array. Thanks.

nightfall(~) % python -c "foo = []; foo[3] = 234"
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in ?
  IndexError: list assignment index out of range

This is completely unacceptable. Sure, I can use list comprehensions to make an N element array that's empty:

foo = [None for x in range(100)]
foo[44] = "Hi"

That only gets me an array with 100 empty elements. Uh.. Not what I want. If I did this on an array with data in it I didn't want to lose, I'd lose all the data.

Sigh...

Comments: 2 | Link to this post | posted at: 21:15

Tags: rants, python

2 responses to 'Python is getting on my nerves'

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To Err isHuman wrote at Fri Mar 21 17:09:31 2008...

When I assign past the end of an array, I'm usually making a mistake and I appreciate it when the language catches it.

I spent many unhappy hours assigning past the ends of arrays in C, and not getting any errors.

Jordan Sissel wrote at Fri Mar 21 18:41:31 2008...

Yes, but in C you can also declare the size of the array when you create it, and you can grow it later. There's no list.resize() in python, but perhaps using lists in this way is "unpythony" for lack of a better (overused) term ;)

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