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On Fri, Oct 18, 2019 at 09:17:54AM -0700, Ethan Furman wrote:
That result just doesn't match up with the '+' operator.
Why not? Before answering, please check the PEP to see if your objection has already been raised. Addition and the plus operator is flexible enough to be used for everything from non-commutative summation, clock arithmetic (9 + 4 = 1), disjoint unions, both boolean OR and XOR, concatenation, conjunction, at least one folk duo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%2BMe and figurative uses like this: https://www.msn.com/en-my/news/national/race-plus-religion-plus-recession-eq... The second definition of "add" in Webster's dictionary is "to join or unite", which matches dict merging very well. WordNet says "join or combine or unite with others" and doesn't get to numeric addition until the fourth definition. It is perfectly natural and obvious for English speakers to think of addition as more than just the narrow definition of numeric addition. This is why people keep independently coming up with the same idea of adding dicts. If you're going to deny that standard, common understanding of "plus" as combining, and claim that it "just doesn't match up" in defiance of common practice, you ought to have a good reason why all those who refer to dict addition or adding dicts are wrong to do so. -- Steven