> On 17 Oct 2019, at 13:46, Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Thu, Oct 17, 2019 at 10:42 PM Anders Hovmöller <bo...@killingar.net> > wrote: >> >>>> On 17 Oct 2019, at 13:26, Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>> Equally subjective, of course, but I prefer to be able to use >>> operators. There's a good reason that we use mathematical symbols for >>> non-numeric data types already (adding tuples together, multiplying a >>> list by an integer, etc), and it definitely makes code easier to read. >> >> The multiply a list/string thing is a big mistake imo. You almost never use >> it so the cost of not having it is almost nothing while the cost of having >> type errors propagate beyond the point where they happened is big. >> > > Actually, I use it often enough to be useful. Probably more often than > numeric exponentiation, and I'm sure you'd agree that 3**7 is better > than requiring math.pow(3,7). I don't understand your point about type > errors; how does "="*79 cause type errors? Or initializing a list of > zeroes with [0]*20 ?
Well obviously never with literals. But most cases of multiplication aren't with literals. So how can you get a type error when doing a*b is the real question. And the answer is now obvious: any time the programmer thinks a and b are numbers but they are not. That's a logical type error that now propagates and it's very hard to track down the offending line when you eventually end up with a crash in a different module because >>> baz = foo / bar Traceback (most recent call last): File "<string>", line 1, in <module> TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for /: 'str' and 'int' > And believe you me, the number of times I have *wished* for features > like these when working in other languages (mainly SourcePawn) makes > me definitely not see them as mistakes. I strongly disagree. I have used it but I always feel dirty for having written code that is clever and not explicit. There just isn't a nice explicit way to do it in python so that's what I'm left with. The utility of the feature is not something I dispute. It is useful! But it would be just as useful as a method. /Anders _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list -- python-ideas@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to python-ideas-le...@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-ideas.python.org/ Message archived at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-ideas@python.org/message/5JWSBRTHO26AAFH74SGTHAWD7UWRZQUR/ Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
