Python: str * int … WTF!? … Thinks … Ah!

I was reading Guido's History of Python blog this morning. In it he mentions this :

Passing an invalid argument, for example a string, is generally caught quickly because few operations accept mixed string/numeric operands (the exception being multiplication)

WTF!?
Rushes over to Terminal...

>>> 'string' *2
'stringstring'

Why the hell would _anyone_ want to do that ?

…Thinks…

…Realise that I have some code that can be simplified with this…

indent=''
for space in range(level):
   indent += ' '

…quick check for zero case…

>>> 'string' *0
''

…changes code…

indent = ' ' * level

Python lesson 1 learned for the day.