[SciPy-dev] New Operators in Python

[Robert Kern]

Perry Greenfield wrote:
> On Mar 24, 2007, at 5:34 PM, Robert Kern wrote:
> 
>> Perry Greenfield wrote:
>>
>>> No other solution is as good as this one, not even close. They may
>>> consider it of limited use, but it's not the first time they have
>>> accommodated numeric needs that are fairly narrow (e.g., complex,
>>> rich comparisons). No one else has to use it if they don't want to,
>>> and it doesn't conflict with any other current usage (or even
>>> proposed as far as I know).
>>>
>>> So I'm all for asking now.
>> I also think it's critical that we don't *ask* for anything.  
>> Instead, we need to
>> *offer* an implementation. If we are the only people who are going  
>> to use it, we
>> will have to be the ones who pony up with the implementation.
>>
>> Using EasyExtend to experiment with the grammar is probably a good  
>> idea to
>> ensure feasibility before going full-bore with a patch against the  
>> interpreter.
>>
>>   http://www.fiber-space.de/EasyExtend/doc/EE.html
> 
> I don't disagree. It would be good to get some feedback from them  
> before investing much work on this to see if they would even consider  
> including the work. If they say: "No way!" then the work is primarily  
> political. If it is: "sure, we can consider it if you give us an  
> implementation." Then it becomes technical work. But my impressions  
> of how this has been received in the past looked more like "Don't  
> think so unless we are persuaded that there is a real need for it",  
> not that it wasn't worth their effort or wasn't technically possible.

Right now, though, the py3k list is entirely devoted to implementation for the
3.0 release. Ideas without implementations are shunted off to python-ideas,
which Guido doesn't read. Language feature proposals without code are pretty
much dead in the water at the moment.

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
 that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
 an underlying truth."
  -- Umberto Eco