GCD in Fractions

[Stefan Behnel]

blindanagram schrieb am 23.09.2014 um 19:43:
> On 23/09/2014 18:26, Stefan Behnel wrote:
>> Wolfgang Maier schrieb am 23.09.2014 um 18:38:
>>> While at first I thought this to be a rather irrelevant debate over module
>>> private vs public naming conventions, I now think the OP is probably right
>>> and renaming fractions.gcd to fractions._gcd may be a good idea.
>> For negative numbers, the "expected" behaviour seems to be unclear, so the
>> current behaviour is just as good as any, so backwards compatibility
>> concerns clearly win this fight.
> 
> The expected behaviour is not unclear for anyone who takes the
> mathematical properties of the GCD seriously.  It's a shame that Python
> doesn't.

May I ask how you get from one little function in the well-defined scope of
a data type module (which is not named "math" or "integers" or "natural" or
anything like it) to the extrapolation that Python doesn't take
mathematical properties serious?

If the scope of that function's applicability does not match what you want
in your specific use case, then by all means, don't use it for your
specific use case.

Stefan