[Python-ideas] PEP: Dict addition and subtraction
Antoine Pitrou
solipsis at pitrou.net
Sat Mar 16 06:39:22 EDT 2019
On Sat, 16 Mar 2019 01:41:59 +1100
Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:
>
> Matrix multiplication is a perfect example: adding the @ operator could
> have been done in Python 0.1 if anyone had thought of it, but it took 15
> years of numerical folk "whinging" about the lack until it happened:
Not so perfect, as the growing use of Python for scientific computing
has made it much more useful to promote a dedicated matrix
multiplication operator than, say, 15 or 20 years ago.
This is precisely why I worded my question this way: what has changed
in the last 20 years that make a "+" dict operator more compelling
today than it was? Do we merge dicts much more frequently than we
did? I don't think so.
> Or the infamous := operator, which ultimately is a useful but minor
> syntactic and semantic change but generated a huge amount of debate,
> argument and negativity.
... and is likely to be a mistake as well. Justifying future mistakes
with past mistakes doesn't sound very reasonable ;-)
> I still remember being told in no uncertain terms by the core devs that
> adding a clear() method to lists was a waste of time because there was
> already a perfectly good way to spell it with slicing. And then ABCs
> came along and now lists have a clear method. So opinions change too.
Not really the same problem. The "+" dict operator is not
intuitively obvious in its meaning, while a "clear()" method on lists
is.
I wouldn't mind the new operator if its meaning was clear-cut. But
here we have potential for confusion, both for writers and readers of
code.
> > Besides, if I have two dicts with e.g. lists as values, I *really*
> > dislike the fact that the + operator will clobber the values rather than
> > concatenate them. It's a recipe for confusion.
>
> Are you confused that the update method clobbers list values rather than
> concatenate them? I doubt that you are.
>
> So why would it be confusing to say that + does a copy-and-update?
Because it's named "+" precisely. You know, names are important. ;-)
Regards
Antoine.
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