Should we add `a * b` for vectors?

[jmh530]

On Monday, 25 September 2017 at 01:08:35 UTC, Nicholas Wilson 
wrote:
>
> There's nothing stopping someone writing a DIP to include `@` 
> (and possibly `#`) as overloadable binary operators.

I actually like * for dot product and matrix multiplication...

The issue is that if you use * for these, then you can't use it 
for element-wise multiplication. Numpy arrays (but not matrices) 
use * and / for element-wise multiplication and division. To do 
matrix multiplication with Numpy arrays, you used to have to use 
the dot function. This is they decided to introduce @ to the 
language, b/c users didn't want to write dot all over the place.

A very popular language with a wide range of uses had to 
introduce a new operator to the language because of design 
choices of its most popular linear algebra library. So it makes 
sense to think about these issues a bit.

> All other characters on the standard keyboard are used I think.

What about forward slash '\' (for inverse)? That is currently 
used for string literals, but I can't think of a binary use right 
now.