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

[Mike Graham]

On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 3:57 PM, Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org> wrote:
> On Sun, 14 Oct 2012 07:40:57 +0200
> Yuval Greenfield <ubershmekel at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 2:04 AM, MRAB <python at mrabarnett.plus.com> wrote:
>>
>> > If it's more than one codepoint, we could prefix with the length of the
>> > codepoint's name:
>> >
>> > def __12CIRCLED_PLUS__(x, y):
>> >     ...
>> >
>> >
>> That's a bit impractical, and why reinvent the wheel? I'd much rather:
>>
>> def \u2295(x, y):
>>     ....
>>
>> So readable I want to read it twice. And that's not legal python today so
>> we don't break backwards compatibility!
>
> Yes, but we're defining an operator for instances of the class, so it
> needs the 'special' method marking:
>
> def __\u2295__(self, other):
>
> Now *that's* pretty!
>
>     <mike


IMO it's essential that we add source code escapes. Imagine the
one-liners this will allow!

    def f(xs):\n\ttry:\n\t\treturn x.pop()\n\texcept ValueError\n\t\treturn None

Can we get this fix applied in Python 2.2 and up?

Mike