On the topic of NaNs: I think in the face of ambiguity, we should refuse
the temptation to guess and raise ValueError when the values given are
not comparable to the point of clearly determining whether `value` is or
isn't within `minimum` and `maximum` or which of the two bounds it
exceeds. It is the programmer's responsibility to ensure they supply
arguments that make sense, and non-numbers should be considered
exceptional behaviour: as such, the programmer that anticipates those
kinds of values should handle them exceptionally.
About the name: clamp seems to be the most favoured name and the
discussion convinced me it's the one that should make it to the eventual
proposal.
About the stdlib/builtin status: `min(max(x, min_), max_)` is a common
enough idiom for a simple enough function that I think it is definitely
beneficial and in no way dangerous to have, and that any status other
than builtin would incur too much overhead for something so small. I
risk claiming that most calls to max() and min() occur in modules that
do not `import math` (or at the very least, they occur often enough
without `import math`), and I believe clamp(), being very similar in
scope to those, should benefit from similar status.
I don't think clamp is a common enough identifier in non-specific fields
to disqualify its implementation as a builtin by itself. By contrast,
terms like `min` and `max` are extremely common in pretty much all
contexts, and yet we've all survived just fine by typing `min_` and
`max_` or even shadowing the names altogether (which I prefer not to do,
but is definitely an option).
FInally, I'd like to lit another fire: given that `min()` and `max()`
accept an arbitrary amount of arguments, and that the signature that
seems to be preferred for the hypothetical clamp at the moment sees
`value` as the first positional argument, should the function then
accept iterables as values for `minimum` and `maximum`?
Something along the lines of:
clamp(value: Number, minimum: Union[Number, Iterable[Number]], maximum:
Union[Number, Iterable[Number]])
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