On 6/30/12 11:57 PM, Simon King wrote:
[X] Determine whether x is a string. If it is, then trace(x) traces execution of code. If it isn't, try to return x.trace().
First, that is how it will work in the deprecation period. Secondly, for the long term, my philosophical objection to that is that the "trace" top-level function is then being used in *completely* different ways depending on the input. In one, it's a mathematical construct. In the other, it has absolutely nothing to do with the mathematics or structure of the object, but instead is purely a low-level programming tool. This isn't just philosophical, too. It would be extremely confusing for a new user who accidentally passed in a string. I think it's much better to throw an error (possibly mentioning trace_execution). As Robert says, a person really wanting to trace the code probably will have no problem finding trace_execution (indeed, probably won't even use trace_execution, as they can use the preparser and pdb directly).
Thanks, Jason -- To post to this group, send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
