launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Benji York <benji.york@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 7:58 PM, Martin Pool <mbp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> If you accept my theory that API clients want three kinds of semantic
> operation ("count them", "give me all", "give me a few") then it seems
> reasonable to have a specific clear network operation that means
> "count them."  It shouldn't be accidentally called as a side effect of
> eg getting or iterating over a list of objects, but it shouldn't
> require you to jump through hoops either: only when the client
> specifically does want to know the number.

This is effectively the approach we're pursuing.  We've removed the
cases where a client can inadvertently trigger a potentially expensive
call to len() but left in the ability to explicitly call it if so
desired.
-- 
Benji York