From: Tim H. <tim...@ie...> - 2002-12-09 16:14:44
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> The questions just keep coming... > > We need to decide whether or not complex comparisons work. > They do not work for Python scalars. Consistency would argue > for them not working for numarray arrays. However some argue: > > 1) not allowing them defeats more generic programming. We agreed > until we found that IDL doesn't support them either, and we never > noticed. We are skeptical of this claim and would like to see > real-life examples. > > 2) it is useful to allow comparisons since that would result in > repeatable, sorting of values (e.g., to find duplicate values) > for ordering purposes. Cannot this just be handled by the sort > routines themselves? Why must this result in comparison operators > working? > > In the absence of good examples for 1) or good arguments for 2) > we propose to make complex comparisons generate exceptions. What is the argument against allowing __eq__ to continue to work, while disallowing __lt__ and friends. The former is well defined. I know comparing floating point number for equality is a bit of a suckers game, but were allowing it for floats and it's sometimes useful. On second thought, maybe I'm just misinterpreting you here since __eq__ works fine for complex scalars. -tim |