On Sat, Aug 4, 2018 at 9:13 AM, Steven D'Aprano <st...@pearwood.info> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 03, 2018 at 03:17:42PM -0400, Todd wrote: > > > Boolean operators like the sort I am discussing have been a standard part > > of programming languages since forever. In fact, they are the basic > > operations on which modern microprocessors are built. > > > > The fact that Python, strictly speaking, doesn't have them is extremely > > unusual for a programming language. > > I'm rather surprised at this claim. > > Can you give a survey of such overridable boolean operators which are > available on modern microprocessors? > > What programming languages already have them? When you say "forever", > are you going back to Fortran in the 1950s? > Sorry I wasn't clear, I didn't mean overloadable boolean operators are standard, but rather boolean operators in general. I was trying to point out that there is nothing domain-specific about boolean operators. > > In many cases they aren't necessary in > > Python since Python's logical operators do the job well enough, but there > > are a set of highly diverse and highly prominent cases where those > logical > > operators won't work. > > Can you list some of these diverse and highly prominent use-cases? > > I can think of two: > > - elementwise boolean operators, such as in numpy; > > - SQL-like DSL languages; > > plus a third rather specialised and obscure use-case: > > - implementing non-binary logical operators, for (e.g. ternary > or fuzzy logic). > Also symbolic mathematics like in sympy. That is three. > > There are workarounds, but they are less than > > optimal for the reasons I describe, and the previous discussion I linked > to > > goes into much more detail why these new operators are important. > > There are certainly advantages to using binary operators over named > functions, and a shortage of good, ASCII punctuation suitable for new > operators. > > I don't think much of your names bOR etc. > > I think that before adding more ad hoc binary operators, we ought to > consider the possibility of custom operators. I am personally very strongly against custom operators. I just have visions of someone not liking how addition works for some particular class and deciding implementing a "＋" operator would be a great idea.
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