How to force a single number to be a tuple

[Bryan Olson]

Roy Smith wrote:
 > For those of us who went to school a while ago, and perhaps didn't pay
 > as much attention in math class as we should have, could you translate
 > "an element of the Cartesian product of zero or more domains" into
 > English?

A domain is a set; it's used in the contexts like the domain of
a function, where it means the values for which the function is
defined.  I see others have explained the Cartesian product.

[...]
 > My Python code built up a list of the values and generated [1, 2,
 > "three", "four"].  My two friends recoiled violently at the idea that I
 > would put heterogeneous data types into a list.  I passed it off as
 > simply being due to their poor unfortunate upbringing in the C++/STL
 > world of type bondage, while I was living in the carefree bohemian
 > Python world.  I was shocked to discover some time later that Python was
 > not as bohemian as I thought, and the priests and elders would have been
 > as dismayed at my carefree mixing of data types in a list as my stodgy
 > C++ brethren were.

Perhaps those priests and elders would be happier in ML or one
of its followers. There's a lot to be said for uniform-type
lists, but that's not Python's idea of lists.


-- 
--Bryan