[Python-Dev] Symmetric vs asymmetric symbols (was PEP 572: Do we really need a ":" in ":="?)

[Tim Peters]

[Steven D'Aprano]

> .... I'd just like to point out that
> given the existence of float NANs, there's a case to be made for having
> separate <> and != operators with != keeping the "not equal" meaning and
> the <> operator meaning literally "less than, or greater than".
>
> py> NAN != 23
> True
> py> NAN < 23 or NAN > 23
> False
>
> (I'm not making the case for this, just pointing out that it exists...)
>
> There would be precedent too: at least one of Apple's SANE maths
> libraries back in the 1990s had a full set of NAN-aware comparison
> operators including IIRC separate "not equal" and "less than or greater
> than" comparisons.
>
> But I think this is a corner of IEEE-754 esoterica that probably doesn't
> need to be a builtin operator :-)
>
> The 754 standard's section 5.7 (Comparisons) defines 26(!) distinct
comparison predicates.  I bet SANE supplied all of them - and quite
possibly nothing else in the world ever bothered (the standard _required_
only a relative few of them).

I never had the slightest interest in garbaging-up Python with syntax for
all those, so never even mentioned it in the early days.

My secret plan ;-) was that if someone agitated for it enough to sway
Guido, I'd add a

    math.ieee_compare(x, y, raise=False)

function that returned one of the four bit constants IEEE_(LESS, EQUAL,
GREATER, UNORDERED} (with values 1, 2, 4, 8), and raised some spelling of
"invalid operation" iff `raise` was True and at least one of the comparands
was a NaN.  That's enough to build any of the standard's predicates (and a
few more essentially useless ones, like "always true").

Then, e.g., for your <> above

def "<>"(x, y):
    return ieee_compare(x, y) & (IEEE_LESS | IEEE_GREATER) != 0

and != above would add IEEE_UNORDERED to the bits checked in that.

Then it's equal easy to build oddballs like "unordered or greater" and
"only equal but raise an exception if a NaN is compared" too.

I've been quite relieved that, after all these years, nobody else seemed to
care about this either :-)
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