Claudio Grondi wrote: > Speaking maybe only for myself: > I don't like implicit rules, so I don't like also any precedence > hierarchy being in action, so for safety reasons I always write even > 8+6*2 (==20) as 8+(6*2) to be sure all will go the way I expect it.
But for people who often use mathematical formulas this looks pretty weird. If it wasn't a programming language, you wouldn't write an asterik even, but either a mid dot or nothing. The latter is possible because contrary to programming languages, you usually use one-letter names in formulas, so it is clear that ab means a*b, and does not designate a variable with the name "ab". x**2+y**2+(2*pi*r) looks way uglier than x²+y²+2πr (another appication for greek letters). Maybe providing a "formula" or "math style" mode would be sometimes helpful. Or maybe not, because other conventions of mathematical formulas (long fraction strokes, using subscript indices and superscript exponents etc.) couldn't be solved so easily anyway. You would need editors with the ability to display and input "formula sections" in Python programs differently. Python would become something like "executable TeX" rather than "executable pseudo code"... -- Christoph -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list