% is not an operator [was Re: Verbose and flexible args and kwargs syntax]

[Eelco]

On Dec 14, 1:38 pm, Steven D'Aprano <steve
+comp.lang.pyt... at pearwood.info> wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Dec 2011 02:09:32 -0800, Eelco wrote:
> > Arguably, the most elegant thing to do is to define integer division and
> > remainder as a single operation; which is not only the logical thing to
> > do mathematically, but might work really well programmatically too.
>
> > The semantics of python dont really allow for this though. One could
> > have:
>
> > d, r = a // b
>
> That would be:
>
> >>> divmod(17, 5)
>
> (3, 2)

Cool; if only it were in the math module id be totally happy.


> > But it wouldnt work that well in composite expressions; selecting the
> > right tuple index would be messy and a more verbose form would be
> > preferred. However, performance-wise its also clearly the best solution,
> > as one often needs both output arguments and computing them
> > simultaniously is most efficient.
>
> Premature optimization.

We are talking language design here, not language use. Whether or not
this is premature is a decision that should be left to the user, if at
all possible, which in this case it very well is; just provide
multiple functions to cover all use cases (only return divisor, only
return remainder, or both)