On Sat, Aug 9, 2014 at 12:20 PM, Alexander Belopolsky <alexander.belopol...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Sat, Aug 9, 2014 at 1:08 AM, Steven D'Aprano <st...@pearwood.info> wrote: >> >> We wouldn't be having >> these interminable arguments about using sum() to concatenate strings >> (and lists, and tuples) if the & operator was used for concatenation and >> + was only used for numeric addition. > > > But we would probably have a similar discussion about all(). :-) > > Use of + is consistent with the use of * for repetition. What would you use > use for repetition if you use & instead?
If the only goal is to not be tempted to use sum() for string concatenation, how about using *? This is more consistent with mathematics terminology, where a * b is not necessarily the same as b * a (unlike +, which is commutative). As an example, consider matrix multiplication. Then, to answer your question, repetition would have been s ** n. (In fact, this is the notation for concatenation and repetition used in formal language theory.) (If we really super wanted to add this to Python, obviously we'd use the @ and @@ operators. But it's a bit late for that.) -- Devin _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
