Hi, On Fri, 14 Mar 2014 01:59:14 +0000 Nathaniel Smith <njs@pobox.com> wrote:
PEP 211, which instead adds an operator for itertools.product, aka, "maybe we can sneak matrix multiply past Guido in some sort of... large, wooden rabbit..."
A chocolate rabbit might be tastier for some core developers ;-) Ok, so first I'm gonna state upfront that I don't have any personal interest in this proposal (i.e. I don't do matrix multiplications often enough for it to matter to me). That said:
This PEP proposes two new binary operators dedicated to matrix multiplication and matrix power, spelled ``@`` and ``@@`` respectively. (Mnemonic: ``@`` is ``*`` for mATrices.)
That sounds like a strange choice to me. There's nothing in "@" or "@@" that suggests "matrices" or "multiplication". Also, are there precedents in other languages? AFAIK, other languages sometimes use ".*" for matrix multiplication (as opposed to element-wise multiplication). Why not re-use that convention? Would that lead to parsing difficulties? That said, I'm rather sympathetic to the general idea, and if "@" is the least contentious option, then I'm ok with it too ("@@" doesn't sound like a good idea at all, though). Thanks for writing this PEP! Regards Antoine.