Re: I don't quite get this "string".find()

From: Tim Peters (tim.peters_at_gmail.com)
Date: 11/11/04 

Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 15:12:51 -0500
To: python-list@python.org

[Jaime Wyant]
> Ahh, I see it now. It seems strange to me, but your find helped make
> sense of it.

Indeed, the only way to have "test".find("") *not* return 0 would be
to make a special case out of searching for an empty string. If you
don't make a special case of it, 0 seems to be the necessary result.

> I guess I thought:
>
> 1) an empty string is like "nothing"
> 2) you can never find "nothing" in something
>
> But I guess an empty string isn't nothing, but a string with no
> length. Ahh, it's still darned strange :).

Consistency and strangeness often go together <0.7 wink>. I find this
particular one ("every string starts with an empty string") strangest
in this context:

>>> "a" in "abc"
True
>>> "c" in "abc"
True
>>> "d" in "abc"
False
>>> "" in "abc"
True

In practice, my solution is not to search for empty strings <wink>.

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