[New-bugs-announce] [issue24921] Operator precedence table in 5.15 should be highest to lowest precedence

[Joseph Schachner]

New submission from Joseph Schachner:

We should not make people who need to read Python documentation do an extra transformation in their heads to correctly understand that in section 5.15 higher precedence is at the bottom of the table and lower precedence is at the top. Because the documentation has this table inverted from the way it is usually presented in other references, one of the top hits in a Google search shows an instructor felt the need to make a version in the usual "high to low precedence" order to show students, see:
http://www.mathcs.emory.edu/~valerie/courses/fall10/155/resources/op_precedence.html
That version is so much more comfortable for me to read, it seems almost strange, but it is true. Please consider changing section 5.15 so it would not need the top paragraph explaining that the table order is not what the reader probably expects, instead just present the table as at the link above - in the order the reader does expect - higher precedence on top, lower on the bottom. That only needs two short sentences of explanation that don't make the reader think "wait ... what?"

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assignee: docs at python
components: Documentation
messages: 249046
nosy: Joseph Schachner, docs at python
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: Operator precedence table in 5.15 should be highest to lowest precedence
versions: Python 2.7

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue24921>
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