Dev] / as path join operator (was: Re: The path module PEP) (original) (raw)

John J Lee jjl at pobox.com
Thu Jan 26 00:48:12 CET 2006

On Thu, 26 Jan 2006, Tony Meyer wrote: [...]

Well, if you include the much larger discussion on python-list, people (including me) have said that removing div is a good idea. If it's included in the PEP, please at least include a justification and cover the problems with it. The vast majority of people (at least at the time) were either +0 or -0, not +1. +0's are not justification for including something.

FWLIW, I'm definitely +1 on using / as a path join operator.

* It's being used to mean "join", which is the exact opposite of /'s other meaning ("divide").

But it's a very readable way to write a common operation. Perhaps one reason the discrepancy you point out doesn't bother me is that division is the least-used of the +-*/ arithmetic operations.

Also, &, | and ^ seem like some sort of precedent, to my brain (if they don't to yours, that's fine and I believe you ;-).

* Python's not Perl. We like using functions and not symbols.

I think this is a tasteful, if not parsimonious, use of a symbol.

John

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