Problems using struct pack/unpack in files, and reading them.

[Random832]

Marko Rauhamaa <marko at pacujo.net> writes:
> Actually, the real question is, is the unary - *really* so useful that
> it merits existence or is it just something that was mindlessly copied
> into programming languages from elementary school arithmetics?

The alternative, if you want to be able to specify negative numbers at
all, is to put - in the literal syntax. So what's "x-1"?

I suppose you could use some *different* symbol in the literal syntax
for negative numbers. I had a calculator once that used a different
symbol (looked like a small superscript minus sign) for it. But Python
is limited to ASCII for basic syntax elements for good reasons.