On Wed, 20 Mar 2019 15:46:24 -1000 Christopher Barker <pythonchb@gmail.com> wrote:
This is precisely why I worded my question this way: what has changed in the last 20 years that make a "+" dict operator more compelling today than it was? Do we merge dicts much more frequently than we did?
The analogy doesn't hold because @ was a new operator -- a MUCH bigger change than dimply defining the use of + (or | ) for dicts.
But it's less disruptive when reading code, because "x @ y" is unambiguous: it's a matrix multiplication. "x + y" can be many different things, and now it can be one more thing.
I wouldn't mind the new operator if its meaning was clear-cut. But
here we have potential for confusion, both for writers and readers of code.
but it's NOT a new operator, it is making use of an existing one, and sure you could guess at a couple meanings, but the merge one is probably one of the most obvious to guess, and one quick test and you know -- I really can't see it being a ongoing source of confusion.
Did you actually read what I said? The problem is not to understand what dict.__add__ does. It's to understand what code using the + operator does, without knowing upfront whether the inputs are dicts. Regards Antoine.