[Python-Dev] A future division proposal

[Moore, Paul]

> I don't know what the best name or symbol would be
> (olddiv, ///?) and admittedly it is ugly to have 3
> division operators. But the alternatives seem far,
> far uglier. Isn't this a case where practicality
> beats purity (for keywords or operators)?

You could probably write a function to do this. There's no need for anything
built into Python.

Actually, when I tried, I got into a bit of a mess getting the type checks
(which you need) right -

    def olddiv(n,m):
        if type(n) == type(m) == type(0):
            return n//m
        else:
            return n/m

But this needs the checks expanded to take longs into account. Which is
where it gets messy.

But:
a) It can be done, and
b) The fact that it's messy probably exposes what's wrong with the old
semantics quite well :-)

Paul.