On Thu, Mar 7, 2019 at 10:52 AM Josh Rosenberg <shadowranger+pythonid...@gmail.com> wrote: > The closest I can come to a thorough definition of what + does in Python (and > most languages) right now is that: > > 1. Returns a new thing of the same type (or a shared coerced type for number > weirdness) > 2. That combines the information of the input operands > 3. Is associative ((a + b) + c produces the same thing as a + (b + c)) > (modulo floating point weirdness) > 4. Is "reversible": Knowing the end result and *one* of the inputs is > sufficient to determine the value of the other input; that is, for c = a + b, > knowing any two of a, b and c allows you to determine a single unambiguous > value for the remaining value (numeric coercion and floating point weirdness > make this not 100%, but you can at least know a value equal to other value; > e.g. for c = a + b, knowing c is 5.0 and a is 1.0 is sufficient to say that b > is equal to 4, even if it's not necessarily an int or float). For numbers, > reversal is done with -; for sequences, it's done by slicing c using the > length of a or b to "subtract" the elements that came from a/b. > 5. (Actual addition only) Is commutative (modulo floating point weirdness); a > + b == b + a > 6. (Concatenation only) Is order preserving (really a natural consequence of > #4, but a property that people expect) > > Allowing dicts to get involved in + means: > > 1. Fewer consistent rules apply to +; > 2. The particular idiosyncrasies of Python dict ordering and "which value > wins" rules are now tied to +. for concatenation, there is only one set of > possible rules AFAICT so every language naturally agrees on behavior, but > dict merging obviously has many possible rules that would be unlikely to > match the exact rules of any other language except by coincidence). a winning > on order and b winning on value is a historical artifact of how Python's dict > developed; I doubt any other language would intentionally choose to split > responsibility like that if they weren't handcuffed by history. > > Again, there's nothing wrong with making dict merges easier. But it shouldn't > be done by (further) abusing +.
Lots of words that basically say: Stuff wouldn't be perfectly pure. But adding dictionaries is fundamentally *useful*. It is expressive. It will, in pretty much all situations, do exactly what someone would expect, based on knowledge of how Python works in other areas. The semantics for edge cases have to be clearly defined, but they'll only come into play on rare occasions; most of the time, for instance, we don't have to worry about identity vs equality in dictionary keys. If you tell people "adding two dictionaries combines them, with the right operand winning collisions", it won't matter that this isn't how lists or floats work; it'll be incredibly useful as it is. Practicality. Let's have some. ChrisA _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list Python-ideas@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
