Obsolesence of <>

[Rainy]

On Thu, 31 May 2001 19:24:09 -0400, Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters <mertz at gnosis.cx> wrote:
>> It is very easy to read "<>" as "is less than or greater than" on the
>> analogy of ">=" reading "is greater than or equal to."  Since all Python
>> values can be compared, every two unequal things are indeed less than or
> 
> "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:
>| Sorry, you're behind the times:
>|
>| Python 2.1 (#15, Apr 16 2001, 18:25:49) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
>| Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>| Alternative ReadLine 1.1 -- Copyright 2001, Chris Gonnerman
>| >>> x=2+3j
>| >>> y=5+8j
>| >>> x<y
>| Traceback (most recent call last):
>|   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
>| TypeError: cannot compare complex numbers using <, <=, >, >=
>|
>| Here, I cannot write x>y, nor x<y, in 2.1 and later.  So, by your
>| reasoning, I shouldn't be able to write x<>y either, right?-)
> 
> Yeah.  I missed this change.  It does reduce the consistency of the
> iconography.  But I still think that the "<>" spelling looks more
> intuitive than the "!=" spelling by way of its nonetheless greater
> consistency with the spelling of other operators, as discussed
> previously.
> 
> In the end, spelling is arbitrary, of course.  But having families of
> corresponding spellings for corresponding semantics makes it easier to
> remember a language, and to teach it.
> 
> FWIW.  I'm not really sure I like the change Alex points to.  It makes
> something like the below fail:
> 
>   l = [(1+1j),(2-2j),Klass(),Klass(),Klass,5,4,3,'c','b','a']
>   l.sort()
> 
> In a list like this, many of the comparisons have no particular meaning.
> I have no idea whether an instance of Klass is more than a complex
> number.  And in most cases, I don't even have any idea whether one
> instance is meaningfully greater than another.  But it is nice to have
> everything have some arbitrary inequality relation in order to create
> partial orderings on the subsets of things that really do have an order.
> It makes perfect sense to me to want the numbers and strings to occur in
> order, even while not caring exactly -where- in the sorted list they
> occur as a sublist.
> 
> Is l.sort() a special case that avoids the non-comparison, btw?  If so,
> substitute similar generic comparisons.  I don't have 2.1 handy to try
> out the example.
> 
> Yours, Lulu...
> 

Could it be that people like <> better because it's easier to type?
I personally never used it, but now that I tried it, it is quite
a bit easier.

-- 
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                -- Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar" 3,1
Here is a letter, read it at your leisure.
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         referring to I/O system services.]