proposed syntax change

[Paul D. Anderson]

Robert Fraser Wrote:

> Paul D. Anderson wrote:
> > I was browsing the Python spec yesterday and came across this interesting and useful syntax:
> > 
> > "/" (one slash) means floating point division, e.g. 5/2 = 2.5 even though 5 and 2 are integers
> > 
> > "//" (two slashes) means integer (floor) division, e.g. 5.0//2.0 = 2.0 even though 5.0 and 2.0 are floats.
> > 
> > I've always been a little troubled by the standard division operator being dependent on the types of the operands. (I understand the need for it, I just didn't like it much.) Now here is an elegant (IMHO) solution.
> 
> I like the idea of adding a "floating point division", but I think it 
> should be a *new* feature while the current / and // are left as they 
> are. How about "./"?
> 
> 5   /  2   = 2         // Current behavior
> 5.0 /  2.0 = 2.5       // Current behavior
> 5   ./ 2   = 2.5       // New behavior
> 5.0 ./ 2.0 = 2.5       // It always floating-point divides
> 
> IOW, ./ is short for "cast operands to double and divide".
> 
> If ./ proves too hard to parse (I think it might require some 
> lookahead), then /^ might work.

To the extent that this was a serious proposal (that is, to a very, very small extent) I would rather reserve the ./ operator for element-wise array division, along with .*, etc., since I'm used to that in other languages. (And the whole point of proposing syntax is to make one's own self comfortable, right?)

Paul