[Numpy-discussion] New Operators in Python

[Zachary Pincus]

Hi folks,

Sorry to rain on this parade, but unicode variable names and/or other  
syntactic elements have already been rejected for Python 3:

http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3099/
> Python 3000 source code won't use non-ASCII Unicode characters for  
> anything except string literals or comments.
To tell the truth, in my code (for an n=1 example), I use elementwise  
(or broadcasted) multiplication about an order of magnitude more than  
matrix multiplication. Now, there's plenty of linear algebra in my  
work, but it's usually boxed off enough from the rest that converting  
everything to matrices, or using the 'dot' function (etc.), is just  
fine.

Personally, I even prefer the current way that numpy does things --  
I've always *really* disliked matlab's special syntax for elementwise  
multiplication. Now, clearly there are cases where this is handy, but  
at least in looking over my code, I find that those cases are quite  
rare, really.

So, in large part, I really don't feel a strong need for new  
operators in numpy. (And in the rest of python too! The @ decorator  
pie-syntax is quite enough for line-noise characters, in my personal  
opinion. And I think that python-dev pretty well agrees too, based on  
the raging flame wars about adding even that.)

Now, this is of course just my single opinion, but folks should  
recall that even C++, which rarely met a feature that it didn't like,  
drew the line at adding extra syntactic operators to the language  
that existed only to be overridden/implemented by users. (Which is  
precisely what's being proposed here.)

Anyhow, feel free to disagree with me -- I'm no expert here. I'm only  
mentioning this as a public service to make it clear that most of  
what's being proposed in this thread is, for better or worse, 100%  
dead-in-the-water for Python 3, and the rest will have a fairly  
significant uphill battle.

Zach




On Mar 26, 2007, at 2:42 AM, dmitrey wrote:

> The unicode keyboards sailing everywhere is just a matter of time
> And python 2-symbol operators soon will look obsolete, this will
> increase migrating from python to Sun fortress etc. I took a look at
> their unicode syntax for math formulas
> http://research.sun.com/projects/plrg/faq/NAS-CG.pdf
> it looks (vs Python) (or even MATLAB) like Pentium 4 vs Intel 386
> processors.
> It just allows copy-paste from articles of many formulas, including
> "ro", 'beta' and other non-ascii symbols
> Also, implementing unicode will allow separate operators for (for
> example) MATLAB cross() equivalent (vector multiplication of vectors).
> WBR, D.
>
> René Bastian wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I am interest both in numarray type multiplication and matrix type
>> multiplication.
>>
>> But I am not shure that I can buy an Unicode keyboard.
>>
>> May be it would be possible to implement a class with
>> user "definissable" (?) signs.
>>
>> My choice :
>>
>> a * b -> numarray type multi
>> a !* b -> matrix
>>
>>
>>
>
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