[Python-ideas] Is there a good reason to use * for multiplication?

MRAB python at mrabarnett.plus.com
Sat Oct 13 00:57:30 CEST 2012


On 2012-10-12 22:37, Ethan Furman wrote:
> Ram Rachum wrote:
>> Hi everybody,
>>
>> Today a funny thought occurred to me. Ever since I've learned to program
>> when I was a child, I've taken for granted that when programming, the
>> sign used for multiplication is *. But now that I think about it, why?
>> Now that we have Unicode, why not use · ?
>
Why not use × ?

> Because it is too easy to confuse · with .
>
Because it is too easy to confuse × with x

> Because it is not solving a problem.
>
Ditto.

> Because it would still take work, and then easily cause confusion.
>
Ditto.
>
> <aside>
> In college we dropped the · and just wrote stuff like:
>
> (x + z)(x - y)
>
> but we can't do that in Python because they are function calls.
> </aside>
>
>
> In short, I don't see it happening.
>
Ditto.




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