[RFC] bzr.jrydberg.versionedfile

[Johan Rydberg]

Aaron Bentley <aaron.bentley at utoronto.ca> writes:

> Johan Rydberg wrote:
>> I disagree.  I think get_text should be the primary operation, and
>> that it should return a list of lines.  If you want it as a string,
>> we'll provide a convenience method for you.
>
> How about an iterable of lines, rather than a list per se?  Maybe it's
> moot, given that we have to load the whole thing in memory while parsing
> the knit, but I can imagine cases in which we'd only want part of the
> file in memory at a time.

What cases is that?

If it is to return an iterable of lines, the implementation of
get_text will probably look something like this:

  get_text(...):
      ...

      for origin, line in foo:
          yield line

So if you just want part of the lines in memory after the call to
get_text, it is probably better to do; get_text(...)[x:x+N].

But you are a better python programmer than me, so there might be
other advantages to return an iterator that I do not know.

~j