incrementation operators?

[Alex Martelli]

"Tim Peters" <tim_one at email.msn.com> wrote in message
news:LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEIKGPAA.tim_one at email.msn.com...
    [snip]
> too.  While everyone thinks "add 1 to i" from time to time, *nobody*
thinks
> "plus plus i" <wink>.
>
> "incr-i"-is-a-nice-thing-to-think-but-remains-unspeakable-ly y'rs

"Increment i" is a *very* common thought, and translating it into
"add one to i" _is_ one level of indirection.  "Increment" is a more
fundamental notion: counting (a succession of increments) is
psychologically before "addition" (e.g. in children's mental
development), and "successor" is one of the fundamental pillars
on which Peano's axioms build the naturals ("zero" being the
other one; "addition" and "1" are less-fundamental concepts,
which get _defined_ in terms of the others).

But getting inc(x) and dec(x) as built-in synonyms of x+=1
and x-=1 can always be lobbied for later, I guess:-).


Alex