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more fun with PEP 276

William Tanksley Google wtanksley at bigfoot.com
Mon Dec 10 16:05:37 EST 2001 
James_Althoff at i2.com wrote:

> I think not.

A compelling argument.  <wink>

> >>> for i in -5 // span // 5:  # closed-closed
> ...     print i,
> -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5

Intriguing.  Odd.  Perverted.  Words would fail me, but doggone it, I
find myself liking it.

> >>> mylist = [0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
> >>> for i in span / len(mylist):
> ...     print mylist[i],
> 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

The scary thing is that despite the ENORMOUS gap between the purpose
of the / operator and your abuse of it (help! I'm being repressed!), I
can still read this naturally: "span over length of myList".

> The (claimed) advantages with this scheme include:
> - no syntax changes required (!!!)
> - handles all combinations of closed/open intervals

Minor niggle: how would users remember which operator represents which
type of range ending?  Do you have a proposed mnemonic?

> Now, that *was* fun, wasn't it.  <wink>

Actually, it was.  I dunno if this should go in, but for its purposes
I like it more than any of the other ideas, including my own.

> Jim

-Billy
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