On Oct 7, 2012, at 8:06 PM, Dave Angel <d...@davea.name> wrote:
> On 10/07/2012 08:00 PM, Jan Karel Schreuder wrote: >> >> >> On Oct 7, 2012, at 7:24 PM, Dave Angel <d...@davea.name> wrote: >> >>>>>> >>>>> >>> >>> It still makes no sense to me. There are at least two equally silly >>> ways to define the results of a negative modulus, and you've properly >>> described one of them, presumably the one that Python implements. >>> >>> But I've used and abused about 35 languages over the years, and each >>> makes its own choice for this. I'd rather just call it undefined, and >>> eliminate it. That's what we did when the hardware guys couldn't decide >>> how the hardware was going to respond to a particular microcode bit >>> pattern. They documented it as undefined, and I made it illegal in the >>> microcode assembler. >>> >>> Fortunately, the OP isn't asking about this case, which is the other >>> reason I didn't bother to describe what Python does. >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> >>> DaveA >>> _______________________________________________ >>> I'm not a professional programmer, so I might be way off base here. But >>> what I like about Pythons modulo solution is that I can use it to right and >>> left shift in lists or tuples, and I will link to the first element when I >>> right shift past the last element and link to the last element when I left >>> shift past the first element. In other words I can consider the last as a >>> chain where the last and the first element are connected. This I find >>> useful in surprisingly many situations. >> >> > Certainly, but you've never had to do that with lists or tuples having > negative lengths. It's a negative modulus that I'm complaining about. > > > -- > > DaveA Aha. Yes I was talking about the solution to -3%5 and found the python solution (2) useful. I'm agnostic about x% -5 _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor