Peter Norvig: New Python Operators (2023)

This is last year's April fools joke?

Honestly though, I wish min and max were treated as first class citizens, the way addition and multiplication are. In-place max=, min= operators would be super useful, both in Python in general and in ML flavored libraries in particular (e.g. numpy, torch).

It took me longer than I'd like to admit.

The lapping cat operator is truly inspired. Being a sucker for for pattern matching, I'm more likely to write

    foo, = seq

or

    foo, *_ = seq

than

    assert len(seq) == 1
    foo = seq[0]

or

    foo = seq[0]

Though I vaguely call past colleagues disagreeing, or at least insisting on parens around the "foo," in the first one.

I knew it was a joke when I saw the first one:

    items *= 0. # items is now empty

But didn’t explain whether it was emptied in place or if a new list object was assigned to items.

I wish Python had null coalescing, custom operators, macros, and optional static typing enforcement at runtime (without needing mypy).

Semi-related, in a past life, I used ... to indicate "not implemented yet":

    def not_implemented_yet():
      ...

These are cute, but this is also one of the reasons why I can never get into python. It's had too much stuff tossed into it.

That was fun, but in a semi-scary way. I have major respect for the source, so when Mr Norvig states that this (the "Emphasis Operator"):

    sigh = 3
    ['oh', 'good', 'grief', *sigh* ['drat']]

results in:

    ['oh', 'good', 'grief', 'drat!', 'drat!', 'drat!']].

I first believed it, then doubted it, then tested it, and then came here to comment. Those exclamation points are not there in the output, which I was very relieved to see. Phew, but I also think it would be a good idea to fix it.

(2023)