[Python-Dev] [Fwd: Discussion: Introducing new operators formatrix computation]

[Paul Prescod]

Gregory Lielens wrote:
> 
> ...
>
> It seems potentially more dangerous than statically adding a new
> operator, no? If two modules
> install incompatible changes of syntax, for exmaple if they demand both
> @ as operator, they will be considered as incompatible? 

I think that the idea is that one module would be in the Matrix
sublanguage and another would be in an XML sublanguage. That way your
context shifts are clear. Presumably the first or second line of the
file says what sublanguage you are using.

> Anyway, it seems that that audience (numeric people) was targeted by
> python since the beginning, because why the hell include complex numbers
> as built-in type if not? They are of a less general usefullness than
> matrices, imho, the last can at least be used for graphic stuff...

Okay, but look at the syntactic support complex numbers needed. Just
"j". The same for string processing. We just reused most of the existing
operators. If you guys made a really kick-ass matrix package that
everyone loved and didn't need any new syntax, Guido might be tempted to
make matrices a built-in type also!

The funny thing is that most of the Python syntax that I don't use today
is ALREADY for matrix operations:

foo[x,y:a,b]
foo()[...]

-- 
 Paul Prescod - Not encumbered by corporate consensus
It's difficult to extract sense from strings, but they're the only
communication coin we can count on. 
	- http://www.cs.yale.edu/~perlis-alan/quotes.html