!wtf ellipsis

[Jonas Kölker]

so, I've read the manuals, done a few hacks, read the quick reference.
however, one thing still eludes me:

what (the hell) is Ellipsis?
what's it good for?
how do I use it; how does the interpreter use it?

.... thanks everybody,

Jonas Kölker

----
[ValueError: ASCII art sig block too ugly to live]

[Peter Otten]

Jonas Kölker wrote:

what (the hell) is Ellipsis?
what's it good for?
how do I use it; how does the interpreter use it?

Alex Martelli gave me the following explanation a while ago:

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm...40news1.tin.it

Peter

[Christos TZOTZIOY Georgiou]

On Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:54:24 +0200, rumours say that Jonas Kölker
<jo**********@yahoo.com> might have written:

what (the hell) is Ellipsis?
what's it good for?

Peter provided a link answering your questions. As a side note, I have
used Ellipsis instead of None as a very handy last item put in queues in
threaded programs (after all, "ellipsis" means "absence" or "lack" in
English :) Thus I avoid creating dummy classes to mark the end of
data...
--
TZOTZIOY, I speak England very best,
"Tssss!" --Brad Pitt as Achilles in unprecedented Ancient Greek

[Erik Max Francis]

Christos TZOTZIOY Georgiou wrote:

Peter provided a link answering your questions. As a side note, I
have
used Ellipsis instead of None as a very handy last item put in queues
in
threaded programs (after all, "ellipsis" means "absence" or "lack" in
English :) Thus I avoid creating dummy classes to mark the end of
data...

But as a sentinel, why would it be superior to None?

--
__ Erik Max Francis && ma*@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
/ \ San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM erikmaxfrancis
\__/ If you don't take chances, you can't do anything in life.
-- Michael Spinks

[Christos TZOTZIOY Georgiou]

On Fri, 13 Aug 2004 16:35:34 -0700, rumours say that Erik Max Francis
<ma*@alcyone.com> might have written:

Christos TZOTZIOY Georgiou wrote:

Peter provided a link answering your questions. As a side note, I
have
used Ellipsis instead of None as a very handy last item put in queues
in
threaded programs (after all, "ellipsis" means "absence" or "lack" in
English :) Thus I avoid creating dummy classes to mark the end of
data...

[Erik]But as a sentinel, why would it be superior to None?

I wouldn't choose the word "superior to", rather "more fitting than"
IMO; that's because I associate None with "no value", and Ellipsis with
"end of values".

PS Irrelevant, but I just thought that it's probably too late to ask
whether any Pythonistas are here in Athens for the Olympic games, in
order to buy them a beer or another drink of their choice :)
--
TZOTZIOY, I speak England very best,
"Tssss!" --Brad Pitt as Achilles in unprecedented Ancient Greek

[AdSR]

Christos "TZOTZIOY" Georgiou <tz**@sil-tec.gr> wrote in message news:<vo********************************@4ax.com>. ..

On Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:54:24 +0200, rumours say that Jonas Kölker
<jo**********@yahoo.com> might have written:

what (the hell) is Ellipsis?
what's it good for?

Peter provided a link answering your questions. As a side note, I have
used Ellipsis instead of None as a very handy last item put in queues in
threaded programs (after all, "ellipsis" means "absence" or "lack" in
English :) Thus I avoid creating dummy classes to mark the end of
data...

It's funny, I always understood ellipsis ('...') as a kind of a
wildcard or abbreviation mark, rather than absence mark. For example,
you'd write:

a[1], a[2], ..., a[N]

which means "all values from a[1] to a[N]" or something like that.

But then of course it's just a symbol...

AdSR

[Erik Max Francis]

AdSR wrote:

It's funny, I always understood ellipsis ('...') as a kind of a
wildcard or abbreviation mark, rather than absence mark. For example,
you'd write:

a[1], a[2], ..., a[N]

which means "all values from a[1] to a[N]" or something like that.

But then of course it's just a symbol...

It's an indication that something was removed or abbreviated. In
mathematics, it has the same meaning, but it's often used in the context
of showing a pattern and then removing unnecessary elements (after the
pattern is obvious), so it tends to get the implied meaning of "and so
on."

--
__ Erik Max Francis && ma*@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
/ \ San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM erikmaxfrancis
\__/ Suffering is a journey which has an end.
-- Matthew Fox