On Sun, Oct 16, 2016 at 5:34 AM, Sven R. Kunze
On 16.10.2016 07:08, David Mertz wrote:
In case it wasn't entirely clear, I strongly and vehemently opposed this unnecessary new syntax. It is confusing, bug prone, and would be difficult to teach.
"Whom does he teach? Children?" Me: "What? No, everybody I think. Why?" She: "It's easy enough to remember what the star does."
As I've said, the folks I teach are mostly working scientists with doctorates in scientific fields and years of programming experience in languages other than Python. For example, rocket scientists at NASA. Now I admit that I don't specifically know how quickly they would pick up on something I've never taught them. But I've written enough teaching materials and articles and books and I have a certain intuition. The way you explained the special case you built up is pretty good, but it's very tailored to making that specific case plausible, and is not general.
She also asked what would the alternative would look like. I wrote: """
from itertools import chain list(chain.from_iterable((i,i,i) for i in range(4))) [0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3] """ Her reaction was like: "That's supposed to be easy to remember? I find the star easier."
That is an absolutely terrible construct, obviously. I have to pause and think a while myself to understand what it does. It also answers a very different use case than the one that has been mostly discussed in this thread. A much better spelling is:
[i for i in range(4) for _ in range(3)] [0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3]
For some related uses, itertools.repeat() is very useful. But the case that has been discussed far more often is like this:
listOfLists = [[1,2,3], [4,5,6,7], [8,9]] flatten(listOfLists)
The very long argument is that somehow that would be easier to spell as:
[*i for i in listOfLists]
It's just not easier. And there are contrary intuitions that will occur to many people based on the several other related-but-different uses of * for packing/unpacking in other contexts. Also, this simplest case might be teachable, but the more general "exactly where can I use that star in a comprehensions" will be far harder to explain plausibly. What's the pattern here?
[(*i,) for i in listOfLists] [(1, 2, 3), (4, 5, 6, 7), (8, 9)] [(i,*i) for i in listOfLists] [([1, 2, 3], 1, 2, 3), ([4, 5, 6, 7], 4, 5, 6, 7), ([8, 9], 8, 9)] [(*i,*i) for i in listOfLists] [(1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3), (4, 5, 6, 7, 4, 5, 6, 7), (8, 9, 8, 9)] [*(i,) for i in listOfLists] # ... no clear intuition here ... [*(*i) for i in listOfLists # ... even more confusing ...
Yes! I know those first few are actually doing something different than the proposed new syntax. But explaining that to my rocket scientists or your girlfriend in a consistent and accurate way would be a huge challenge. It would mostly come down to "don't do that, it's too confusing." -- Keeping medicines from the bloodstreams of the sick; food from the bellies of the hungry; books from the hands of the uneducated; technology from the underdeveloped; and putting advocates of freedom in prisons. Intellectual property is to the 21st century what the slave trade was to the 16th.