On Thursday, March 27, 2014 10:47:04 PM UTC+5:30, MRAB wrote: > On 2014-03-27 15:51, Rustom Mody wrote: > > On Thursday, March 27, 2014 8:58:51 PM UTC+5:30, Mark H. Harris wrote: > >> On 3/25/14 6:58 PM, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > >> > To quote a great Spaniard: > >> > “You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you > >> > think it means.” > >> In~con~theveable ! My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my > >> father, prepare to die... > >> > Do you think that the ability to write this would be an improvement? > >> > import ⌺ > >> > ⌚ = ⌺.╩░ > >> > ⑥ = 5*⌺.⋨⋩ > >> > ❹ = ⑥ - 1 > >> > ♅⚕⚛ = [⌺.✱✳**⌺.❇*❹{⠪|⌚.∣} for ⠪ in ⌺.⣚] > >> > ⌺.˘˜¨´՛՜(♅⚕⚛) > >> Steven, you're killing me here; argument by analogy does not work! > >> √ = lambda n: sqrt(n) <===== but this should work... > >> In point of fact, it should be built-in ! OK, IMHO. > >> > Of course, it's not even necessary to be that exotic. "Any unicode symbol > >> > that is not a number"... that means things like these: > >> No, any unicode character (except numerals) should be able to begin a > >> name identifier. alt-l λ and alt-v √ should be valid first > >> character name identifier symbols. > >> > There are languages that can allow arbitrary symbols as identifiers, like > >> > Lisp and Forth. You will note that they have a certain reputation for > >> > being, um, different, and although both went through periods of > >> > considerable popularity, both have faded in popularity since. > >> Actually, there is a recent resurgence of popularity in both common > >> lisp and scheme these days. But, again, that has nothing to do with my > >> argument. No modern language should limit the use of certain symbols to > >> say, only math √ . The radical symbol is more often than not going > >> to be useful only with math (which , by the way is why it should be > >> built-in as √ = squre-rooot) but why limit its use elsewhere. > >> Whether this can work in python is also beside the point, because > >> I'm not demanding anything here either, at this point. > >> have a good day! > > The problem is that mathematicians invent notations in a completely > > laissez-faire manner. > > Language implementers having to unrestrainedly keep up would go mad. > > And then us vanilla users (aka programmers) would have to deal with maddened > > implementers. > > Observe: > > Good ol infix -- x+y.. > > prefix (with paren) -- foo(x) > > prefix without -- ¬ x > > In case you thought alphanumerics had parens -- sin x > > Then theres postfix -- n! > > Inside fix -- nCr (Or if you prefer ⁿCᵣ ??) > > And outside fix -- mod -- |x| > > And Ive probably forgotten 2 dozen other common ones
> You haven't mentioned implicit multiplication: xy Yeah -- thats a bad one! Can mean - ordinary multiply (if you are in school) - overloaded (scalar-field or scalar-vector) multiply in linear algebra - function application (tensors??) - concatenation (awk, snobol (with space)) - a 2 char variable (for 'normal' (whatever that means) programmer) > Then there's raising to a power sin²(x), except that what looks like > raising to -1 actually means the inverse function (arcsin). Non-linear notations is another can (barrel?) of worms Matrices/Determinants anyone? Yeah... Copying the *notations* of mathematicians is not such a great idea. And yet doing away with it too summarily leads to Cobol, Sql etc. The math remains willy-nilly... just under a steaming pile of alphanumeriage. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list