syntax question: "<>" and "!=" operators

[David Eppstein]

In article <mailman.1016396564.27134.python-list at python.org>,
 mertz at gnosis.cx (David Mertz, Ph.D.) wrote:

> Nonetheless, I think of the natural language semantics of the
> symbols--or maybe better "insinuations"--prefers '<>' to '!='.  The
> (good) one suggests "is greater than or less than (but not equal to)".
> I know that not everything is technically in an order relation, but it
> still "makes sense" at a first approximation.  The (bad) one looks like
> some odd sort of augmented assignment.  "Hmmm... assign, what?  The
> negation of the right side to the left side?!  The LHS negated with the
> RHS?!"

I disagree -- the "<>" makes sense only if you think about it for real 
numbers, while "!=" matches the way I pronounce the symbol ("not 
equals"), looks visually similar to the way I'd draw the symbol if I had 
a better character set (equal sign with slash through it), and makes 
sense for all types of objects.

But then, while I've switched from Pascal to C and vice versa several 
times, it's been several years since I last worked with Pascal while I 
still use several C-like languages, so maybe I'm biased from that.

-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/