On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 8:45 AM, Nils Bruin <nbr...@sfu.ca> wrote: > On Tuesday, March 1, 2016 at 5:23:36 PM UTC-8, kcrisman wrote: >> >> If I recall correctly, Jason Grout's example for this is >> >> x+y-y >> >> which becomes x but in principle had two variables, so how do you know >> which one is "right"? > > > Hm, I'm not sure that's a problem here. Indeed if both are defined then one > would hope that > > f1(a)+f2(a)+f3(a) = (f1+f2+f3)(a) > > which is still OK in your example. If one of them errors out then there's > not a direct problem. > > Anyway, I'm -1 on supporting calling expressions with one variable (and one > argument) and/or supporting calling expressions with an empty argument list > (which would also be unambiguous) and/or calling constant expressions with > no arguments at all. > > It's easy to explain "expressions do not support calling syntax. You need a > function for that". > It's hard to explain "expressions don't really support calling, except in > some edge cases that you will initially encounter most". > By having the muddling exceptions, you make it harder for novice users to > start learning the difference between a symbolic expression and a symbolic > function; a difference they'll need later anyway. > If you don't want to talk about functions at all, just use "subs". >
You're right. Plus we just spent 7+ years telling everybody that the above is what we are going to do. So let's do it. William > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "sage-devel" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- William (http://wstein.org) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
