On Tue, May 31, 2022 at 5:54 AM fjwillemsen--- via Python-ideas < python-ideas@python.org> wrote:
I can not think of good reasons why Python array multiplication should not throw an error for negative multipliers, because it is meaningless to have array multiplication by negative value in the way it is intended in Python.
I can think of several reasons, but the big one is "because there is a lot of production code out there that depends on this behavior." Maybe if Python were adding this feature today, the implementers might take your suggestion to heart and raise on negative length array construction. But, it did not and now there is a lot of code that already exists and would fail if this were changed. Consider it water under the bridge and move on. Eric