Division considered un-Pythonic (Re: Case-sensitivity: why -- or why not? (was Re: Damnation!))

[Konrad Hinsen]

Travis Oliphant <olipt at mayo.edu> writes:

> > Currently, Python provides no way for you to directly specify
> > which one you want -- instead, it uses a heuristic based on the
> > run-time types of the arguments. This clearly violates the principle
> > of not trying to guess what the programmer meant. Therefore, it
> > is un-Pythonic. QED.
> > 
> 
> Thank you for this clear explanation.  I agree with this statement.  I
> have been bit several times by this problem of being able to specify which
> kind of division I want and having it depend on input types.

Me too. Moreover, the only way to ensure that no integer division will
take place is to write (1.*a)/b or (0.+a)/b, which looks rather weird
unless you know the trick. float(a)/b is more obvious but will yield a
very wrong result if a happens to be complex.
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