On 2019-03-15 19:05, Jonathan Fine wrote:> Guido wrote:
>
>> There's been a lot of discussion about an operator to merge two
dicts. I participated in the beginning but quickly felt overwhelmed by
the endless repetition, so I muted most of the threads.
>
>> But I have been thinking about the reason (some) people like
operators, and a discussion I had with my mentor Lambert Meertens over
30 years ago came to mind.
>
>> For mathematicians, operators are essential to how they think.
>
> I agree about the endless repetition. I hope Steven D'A is making good
> progress with the revised PEP. I think that could help us focus
> discussion.
>
> A few days ago, I drafted but did not send a post on binary operators.
> Prompted by Guido's helpful post, I'm appending it below. My approach
> and opinions are not the same as Guido's, but have much in common.
> Perhaps later, I'll clarify where I agree with Guido, and where my
> opinions differ.
>
> Certainly, I think we have in common an emphasis on usability and in
> particular readability of code.
>
> ====================================================
> SUBJECT: Naming things: would having more binary operators help?
>
> SUMMARY
> I'm refocusing our earlier discussion on binary operators. I suggest
> we discuss the question:
> Providing more binary operators. When would this make naming things
> this easier? And when harder?
>
> THE PROBLEM
> Naming things is hard.
>
> For example https://hilton.org.uk/blog/why-naming-things-is-hard
> "Naming is communication. Bad names prevent code from clearly
> communicating its intent, which is why code with obfuscated names is
> spectacularly hard to understand. The compiler might not care, but the
> humans benefit from naming that communicates effectively."
>
> AN EXAMPLE
> One person wrote:
> using + to merge dicts is simple, non-disruptive, and unlikely to
> really confuse anyone - so why not?
>
> Another person proposed:
> d1 << d2 merges d2 into a copy of d1 and returns it, with keys from d2
> overriding keys from d2.
>
> A third person wrote:
> "|" (especially "|=") *is* suitable for "update"
> [So] reserve "+" for some alternative future commutative extension
>
[snip]
There was also the suggestion of having both << and >>.
Actually, now that dicts are ordered, that would provide a use-case,
because you would then be able to choose which values were overwritten
whilst maintaining the order of the dict on the LHS.
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