On Mar 1, 7:04 am, Kaz Kylheku <k...@kylheku.com> wrote: lisp: (floor (/ x y)) --[rewrite]--> (floor x y)
Thanks for this interesting point. I don't think it's a good lang design, more of a lang quirk. similarly, in Python 2.x, x/y will work when both x and y are integers. Also, x//y works too, but that // is just perlish unreadable syntax quirk. similarly, in perl, either one require POSIX; floor(x/y); the require POSIX instead of Math is a quirk. But even, floor should really be builtin. or using a perl hack int(x/y) all of the above are quirks. They rely on computer engineering by- products (such as int), or rely on the lang's idiosyncrasy. One easy way to measure it is whether a programer can read and understand a program without having to delve into its idiosyncrasies. Problem with these lang idioms is that it's harder to understand, and whatever advantage/optimization they provide is microscopic and temporary. best is really floor(x/y). idiomatic programing, is a bad thing. It was spread by perl, of course, in the 1990s. Idiomatic lang, i.e. lang with huge number of bizarre idioms, such as perl, is the worst. Xah -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
