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From: Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 10:37:19 -0600
Subject: Re: unicode as valid naming symbols
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On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 2:52 AM, Antoon Pardon
<antoon.pardon@rece.vub.ac.be> wrote:
> On 26-03-14 03:56, MRAB wrote:
>> Or as a root operator, e.g. 3 =E2=88=9A x (the cube root of x).
>>
> Personally I would think such an operator is too limited to include in a =
programming language.
> This kind of notation is only used with a constant to indicate what kind =
of root is taken and
> only with positive integers. Something like the equivallent of the follow=
ing I have never seen.
>
>   t =3D 2.5
>   x =3D 8.2
>   y =3D t =E2=88=9A x

An example is taking the geometric mean of an arbitrary number of values:

    product =3D functools.reduce(operator.mul, values, 1)
    n =3D len(values)
    geometric_mean =3D n =E2=88=9A product

I might argue though for the inverted syntax (product =E2=88=9A n) to more
closely parallel division.


> Of course we don't have to follow mathematical convention with python. Ho=
wever allowing any
> unicode symbol as an identifier doesn't prohibit from using =E2=88=9A as =
an operator. We do have
> "in" and "is" as operators now, even if they would otherwise be acceptabl=
e identifiers.
> So I wonder, would you consider to introduce log as an operator. 2 log x =
seems an interesting
> operation for a programmer.

If it's going to become an operator, then it has to be a keyword.
Changing a token that is currently allowed to be an identifier into a
keyword is generally avoided as much as possible, because it breaks
backward compatibility.  "in" and "is" have both been keywords for a
very long time, perhaps since the initial release of Python.