Aaron Hall wrote: > Currently, Python only has ~ (tilde) in the context of a unary operation (like > -, with __neg__(self), and +, __pos__(self)). > ~ currently calls __invert__(self) in the unary context. > I think it would be awesome to have in the language, as it would allow > modelling along the > lines of R that we currently only get with text, e.g.: > smf.ols(formula='Lottery ~ Literacy + Wealth + Region', data=df) > With a binary context for ~, we could write the above string as pure Python, > with > implications for symbolic evaluation (with SymPy) and statistical modelling > (such as with > sklearn or statsmodels) - and other use-cases/DSLs. > In LaTeX we call this \sim (Wikipedia indicates this is for "similar to"). > I'm not too particular, but __sim__(self, other) would have the benefits of > being both short and consistent with LaTeX. > This is not a fully baked idea, perhaps there's a good reason we haven't > added a binary > ~. It seems like I've seen discussion in the past. But I couldn't find such > discussion. And as I'm currently taking some statistics courses, I'm getting > R-feature-envy again... > What do you think? > Aaron Hall
I really do not fully understand your proposal. I do not know nothing about R and my statistical knowledge has gone long ago. However, I think that we cannot expect that Python accommodates every existing domain. Let me explain: Python have not special features, syntax, operators to deal with SQL, HTML, ini files, OpenGL, etc. These domains, and others, are supported via libraries, outside of the language core. ~ exists in bit-wise context and, as long as I know, it comes from C --I have never used it indeed in Python. It is a unary operator because it works in that way as a bitwise operator. I cannot see any improvement in becoming ~ into a binary operator. I imagine that a binary ~ would have a completely different meaning from a unary ~. I can foresee many problems here. In my opinion, you should prove that binary ~ has a relevant benefit for the whole language, not just for R tasks. It should be useful in some different domains and behave consistently --or at least so consistent as possible-- in those domains. Can you, for instance, envision other uses of binary ~ beyond R? _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list -- python-ideas@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to python-ideas-le...@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-ideas.python.org/ Message archived at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-ideas@python.org/message/UMXBIM6TSOTR76KOBOJXGVJUDMX7IHBT/ Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
