[Python-ideas] [RFC] draft PEP: Dedicated infix operators for matrix multiplication and matrix power

[Nick Coghlan]

On 16 March 2014 06:50, Alexander Belopolsky
<alexander.belopolsky at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Abstractly, 1-dimensional arrays are neither columns nor rows, but Python's
> horizontal notation makes them more row-like than column-like.  In
> 2-dimensional case, [[1,2]] is a row-vector and [[1],[2]] is a
> column-vector.  Which one is more "natural"?

Folks, please stop trying to argue this one in the abstract. The
decision will likely be made primarily based on the feedback of folks
that have *actually been using and teaching* Python as a tool for
matrix manipulation (etc) for more than a decade.

Guido has asked them to have that discussion and summarise their
conclusions in the PEP - we can lob our armchair opinions into the mix
after the experts have spoken.

This won't be the first time features have been added to the language
core specifically for the benefit of the numeric community - the
ellipsis notation and extended slicing in general were added for their
benefit years ago (I started getting involved in Python core
development around Python 2.3, just as the core sequence types were
being updated to support extended slicing, and being able to use
"s[::-1]" with lists, strings, etc was a novel concept).

Regards,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia