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Groups > comp.lang.python > #45166

Re: Python for philosophers

From Gregory Ewing <greg.ewing@canterbury.ac.nz>
Newsgroups comp.lang.python
Subject Re: Python for philosophers
Date 2013-05-12 13:26 +1200
Message-ID <av89dcFbgncU1@mid.individual.net> (permalink)
References <mailman.1566.1368302603.3114.python-list@python.org>

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Citizen Kant wrote:
> I roughly came to the idea that Python could be 
> considered as an *economic mirror for data*, one that mainly *mirrors* 
> the data the programmer types on its black surface, not exactly as the 
> programmer originally typed it, but expressed in the most economic way 
> possible.

At best, this would be true only for a very small
subset of things that you can enter into the
interactive interpreter.

Even confining yourself to arithmetic expressions,
there are problems. Consider:

 >>> 12**34
4922235242952026704037113243122008064L

The input is 6 characters long, and the output
is 37 characters long. Is that more "economical"?

-- 
Greg

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Thread

Python for philosophers Citizen Kant <citizenkant@gmail.com> - 2013-05-11 22:03 +0200
  Re: Python for philosophers Gregory Ewing <greg.ewing@canterbury.ac.nz> - 2013-05-12 13:26 +1200
  Re: Python for philosophers Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2013-05-13 02:46 +0000
  Re: Python for philosophers Ramchandra Apte <maniandram01@gmail.com> - 2013-05-14 20:51 -0700

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