[Python-ideas] math.tau

[Chris Barker]

On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 8:15 AM, Victor Stinner <victor.stinner at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Once a year, someone asks for math.tau and then disappears.


well, it's s small enough deal that overcoming the inertia is probably way
too much work for someone to carry it through -- which doesn't mean it's
not a good idea.


> The previous attempt to add math.tau was rejected:
> http://bugs.python.org/issue12345


well, toward teh end of that issue thread, we have fro Guido:

"""
Uh, not until I've seen a lot more evidence that people are habitually
writing "TAU = 2 * math.pi" in their programs...
"""

then a bit of evidence about how common the use is -- but no commentary on
that. I'd say "Habitually" is not well defined. The trick with "evidence"
is that many people compute a 2*pi constant, but not many people call it
"tau". I'm for one have some version of :

twopi = 2*math.pi

in a huge fraction of the code I use pi in -- though I'm can't say I'm
consistent as to what I call it, even in my own code.

So I'm going to equivocate:

+1 because while trivial, it's also useful and really commonly used

-1 because the name "tau" is unknown enough that even if it's there, a LOT
of people will compute themselves anyway :-( -- which, as pointed out is
not a big deal.

-Chris


-- 

Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
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