Caleb Donovick writes:

 > I don't really want to change the semantic of =.  What Yanghao and
 > I are asking for is an in-place update/assign operator which isn't
 > burdened with numeric meaning.

And what I'm asking for is a justification for that.  Python in
general has done fine without it for almost 3 decades.  I believe you
that you have so far not found a way to make a pretty DSL without it,
and similarly for Yanghao's HDL.  But it's far from obvious that none
exists that most Pythonistas would find satisfactory.

It's easy to understand why NumPy wanted an additional operator: it's
well-known and easily verified by looking at any numerical analysis
textbook that matrices can benefit from having notation for a special
multiplication operation as well as for all elementwise numerical
operations.  Making NumPy's job easier makes Python better for
literally millions of Python users.

So far the request for an in-place update operator seems to fail on
both counts.  "Need" fails for lack of examples.  "Broad benefit"
could be implied by "need" and a bit of imagination applied to
concrete examples, but on the face of it seems unlikely because of the
lack of persistent voices to date, and "need" itself hasn't been
demonstrated.

Maybe you'll persuade enough committers without examples.  Maybe the
problem will be solved en passant if the "issubclass needs an
operator" thread succeeds (I've already suggested to Yanghao offlist
that Guido's suggested spelling of "<:" seems usable for "update",
even though in that thread it's a comparison operator).  But both
would require a lot of luck IMO.

Steve
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