Verbose and flexible args and kwargs syntax

[Jussi Piitulainen]

Eelco Hoogendoorn writes:

> As for %; it is entirely unclear to me why that obscure operation
> ever got its own one-character symbol. Ill take 'mod', or even
> better, 'modulus' any day of the week.

The modulus is not the result but one of the arguments: when numbers x
and y are congruent modulo n (stated in terms of the modulo operation:
x mod n = y mod n), the modulus is n. A word for x mod n is remainder.

I agree about the obscurity of using the percent sign as the operator.

A quick google suggests that your use of 'modulus' is now popular
among programmers. Past experience in mathematics newsgroups tells me
that some mathematicians do not accept the existence of any remainder
operator at all. Honest. (I see them but I cannot understand them.)