Why tuples use parentheses ()'s instead of something else like <>'s?

S

seberino

Brian

I am so thankful for your reply and for Alex's and everyone else's on
this thread. (See my reply to Alex.) This email may seem minor but it
was bugging me for months. You just
pointed out what I should have remembered on my own...

*<>'s wouldn't have been a perfect choice because they would have had
their
own unique gotchas involving accidentally interpreting them as binary
shift operators*

I really appreciate it.

Chris
 
G

Grant Edwards

They're guillemets (with an "e"); this is a [relatively] well-known
Adobe SNAFU.

Ah. Googling for "guillemots punctuation" did turn up enough
hits that it didn't occur to me that I was using the wrong
spelling.
 
S

Steve Holden

Dan said:
I was pretty sure that « and » were guillmots, but google sure
preferred the sea bird when I asked it.


They're guillemets (with an "e"); this is a [relatively] well-known
Adobe SNAFU. (A quick google search or two failed to find an
authoritative reference, but I know that such references are out there
somewhere.)

Regards,
Dan
Adobe recorded their error in the Red Book errata, but electronic
admissions of the same error are apparently impossible to come by.

regards
Steve
 
J

Jeff Shannon

John said:
I suppose the forces of darkness will forever keep Python from
requiring utf-8 as the source encoding. If I didn't make a fetish
of trying to see the good in everybody's position, I could really
work up a dislike of the notion that you should be able to use
any old text editor for Python source.


It's not so much the desire to be able to use any old text editor that
keeps Python in ASCII, it's the desire to use any old *hardware*.
Keyboards with guillemots are not exactly a worldwide norm, and needing
to remember and type some arcane alt-keycode formula to be able to do
basic scripting would be obnoxious, to say the least. Most keyboards
worldwide provide decent support for the ASCII character set (though
some add a few extra national characters). Perhaps things will change
when a majority of the world's programmers use a non-Roman alphabet /
character set, but even then there's a significant weight of historical
reasons to overcome.

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International
 
N

Nick Coghlan

Ed said:
Exactly! Now can we clear anything else up for you? ;-)

How about a computer program than can correctly count the number of letter E's
in your signature? :)

Cheers,
Nick.
I like the sig, if you hadn't guessed. . .
 
R

Roel Schroeven

Rocco said:
So to summarize:

Commas define tuples, except when they don't, and parentheses are only
required when they are necessary.

I hope that clears up any confusion.

You have my vote for QOTW.
 
A

Alex Martelli

John Roth said:
and division. We've allowed ourselves to be limited by the
ASCII character set for so long that improving that seems to be
outside of most people's boxes.

APL didn't allow itself to be limited that way. Anybody who's used it
can hardly be accused to keep non-ASCII characters "outside their box".

And, you know what? Despite being an old APL user, I think would be a
_disaster_ for Python to go that route. Yes, ASCII imposes design
constraints. But constraints can be a good and helpful thing. Look for
example at what classical architects and sculptors DID, within horrible
technical constraints on materials and methods, and compare it with
artsy modern architecture, which can use an enormously wider palette of
technical approaches and materials... I think a tiny minority of today's
architecture and sculpture can rightfully be compared with the
masterpieces of millennia past. Similarly, highly constrained forms
such as sonnet or haiku can unchain a poet's creativity in part BECAUSE
of the strict constraints they impose wrt free verse or prose...

Back to feet-on-ground issues, mandating a wider-than-ASCII character
set would horribly limit the set of devices, as well as of software
tools, usable with/for Python -- I love the fact that Python runs on
cellphones, for example. Input methods for characters outside the ASCII
set are always a bother, particularly to the touch-typist: even to enter
Italian accented vowels, on this US keyboard, I have to go through
definitely eccessive gyrations, which horribly slow down my usually very
fast typing. Seeing what you're doing can sometimes be a bother too:
you need to ensure the glyphs for all the characters you need are
readable _and distinguishable_ in whatever font you're using.


Alex
 
A

Alex Martelli

Dan Sommers said:
I was pretty sure that « and » were guillmots, but google sure
preferred the sea bird when I asked it.

They're guillemets (with an "e"); this is a [relatively] well-known
Adobe SNAFU. (A quick google search or two failed to find an
authoritative reference, but I know that such references are out there
somewhere.)

Ameritan Heritage dictionary:


SYLLABICATION:
guil·le·met

PRONUNCIATION:
gl-mt, g--m

NOUN:
Either of a pair of punctuation marks («) or (») used in some
languages, such as French and Russian, to mark the beginning and end of
a quotation.


SYLLABICATION:
guil·le·mot

PRONUNCIATION:
gl-mt

NOUN:
Any of several auks of the genus Cepphus, having black plumage with
white markings.


Both come from the French name "Guillaume" (William), but they happened
to pass into English with slightly different spellings. (I find
American Heritage to be a very authoritative reference -- I just love
it!-).


Alex
 
A

Alex Martelli

Jeff Shannon said:
to remember and type some arcane alt-keycode formula to be able to do
basic scripting would be obnoxious, to say the least. Most keyboards
worldwide provide decent support for the ASCII character set (though
some add a few extra national characters). Perhaps things will change

Italian-layout support for braces is the pits (alt-keycodes ahoy): one
way I managed to get a local friend interested in Python was to point
out that he'd neved NEED to type braces (calling `dict' is just as good
a way to make dictionaries, as braces-laden `dict display' forms;-).


Alex
 
R

Reinhold Birkenfeld

Alex said:
Italian-layout support for braces is the pits (alt-keycodes ahoy): one
way I managed to get a local friend interested in Python was to point
out that he'd neved NEED to type braces (calling `dict' is just as good
a way to make dictionaries, as braces-laden `dict display' forms;-).

That's equally true for the German keyboard layout, though I believe
that most programmers switch to standard English layout anyway.

Reinhold
 
C

Carl Banks

Alex said:
I think a tiny minority of today's
architecture and sculpture can rightfully be compared with the
masterpieces of millennia past.

Not that I disagree with your overall point, but I suspect a tiny
minority of the architecture and sculpture from millenia past can be
rightfully compared with the masterpieces of millenia past.

Then again, millenia past didn't have Frank Gehry (i.e., the Perl of
modern architecture).
 
A

Alex Martelli

Carl Banks said:
Not that I disagree with your overall point, but I suspect a tiny
minority of the architecture and sculpture from millenia past can be
rightfully compared with the masterpieces of millenia past.

True. Most forgettable architecture has fortunately crumbled to
dust;-).

Still -- there's more of that from millennia past than one might think.

I was walking back from grocery shopping today (my daughter having
borrowed my car, I had to walk to the market and back), and I noticed a
new display in a familiar courtyard.

Finally, over 90 years after the original discoveries, they've built a
display showcase of the two major pre-Etruscan necropolises -- San
Vitale and Savena -- which were discovered before WW 1, when
urbanization was first done on the neighborhood I was born in, the same
place I currently live in.

About 3000 years ago, with little beyond dried mud (the Bologna region
was never rich in anything but clay, as building materials go -- and at
that time they didn't fire-bake clay into bricks, not regularly,
anyway), and wood long since rotten, some unknown, unsung architects put
together a small town for the dead, right below the sidewalks I thread
every day.

My breath was taken away by finally seeing some of their work on display
in its rightful place, my birthplace and residence, as opposed to the
museums (several blocks away) where it's generally gathering dust in.

Have you heard of Villanova, often named as the birthplace of Italian
civilization? That's about 15 km away, where I generally go for major
grocery shopping at a hypermarket when I _do_ have a car. San Vitale
and Savena were way older, more primitive, more essential -- no jewels
of gold and amber to gawp at, yet... the pre-Etruscans,
pre-Villanovians, still hadn't managed yet to get in gear with the
system of commerce and European- and Mediterranean-wide exhanges which
later made Etruria the beacon of arts and culture. Within the
constraints of a still rather poor material culture, the necropolises of
Savena and San Vitale nevertheless exhibit the kind of limpid, geometric
symmetry, spiritual balance, and minimalistic play of emptiness and
fullness, that _defines_ worthwhile architecture to my soul...

How many more jewels like this one are still buried under the soil of
Italy (to name just one place, albeit a rather fecund one for that kind
of thing)? Nobody knows -- basically, every time you're excavating
something, be it to lay foundations for a warehouse or whatever, among
your risks as a developer is that the first few shovelfuls will reveal
*yet one more* previously unsuspected architectural and archeological
treasure, so that your development will be blocked and stalled for
years, decades, while the duly appointed officials salvage all that's
there. Why, even when you're restoring an already well-known
architectural masterpiece from the Renaissance, you STILL risk finding a
well-preserved marble amphitheater from Roman times that the Renaissance
architects used as part of their _foundations_... happened downtown in
Bologna just over 10 years ago -- and Bologna was a somewhat marginal
provincial town 2000 or so years ago: just imagine what it must be like
as you move southwards through Tuscany towards the heart of Roman
culture in Lazio...! ((Being Italian, I tend to focus on the way things
are here -- but I heard the projects to restore the city walls in
Instambul, aka Bizantium, came upon exactly the same kinds of problems
over the last 20+ years... Italy certainly has no monopoly on having
layers upon layers upon layers of great architecture and civilization!))

Then again, millenia past didn't have Frank Gehry (i.e., the Perl of
modern architecture).

Uhm -- I count the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao among the _successes_ of
modern architecture... yes, it IS rich and redundant and wild and self
complacent... it _should_ be, much like (say) the Pantheon or Saint
Peter's in Rome, or Saint Nicholas in Prague (and other masterpieces of
Flaming Baroque, "Il Barocco di fiamma")... not ALL great art is
minimalistic and spare and understated! _Some_ of the time, an artist
manages to overwhelm you with perfect mastery of overflowing richness...
like, say, Bach's Matthauspassion's richness, wrt the spareness his Art
of the Fugue... all I'm saying is that material or formal constraints
can HELP art, not that they're necessarily _indispensable_ to it...


Alex
 
J

Jeff Shannon

Alex said:
Uhm -- I count the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao among the _successes_ of
modern architecture...

I'll give you the Bilbao Guggenheim, which (at least in the exterior
pictures I can find) is a very attractive building, but here in
Seattle we must deal with the giant eyesore that is Gehry's Experience
Music Project, which (at least to my eyes) looks like a monstrous pile
of architectural rubbish. I can appreciate Gehry's attempts to get
away from the tyranny of the straight line, and even with the EMP
there's certain details which turned out well, but the overall effect
is that of an overturned garbage pail.

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International
 
S

Steve Holden

Jeff said:
I'll give you the Bilbao Guggenheim, which (at least in the exterior
pictures I can find) is a very attractive building, but here in Seattle
we must deal with the giant eyesore that is Gehry's Experience Music
Project, which (at least to my eyes) looks like a monstrous pile of
architectural rubbish. I can appreciate Gehry's attempts to get away
from the tyranny of the straight line, and even with the EMP there's
certain details which turned out well, but the overall effect is that of
an overturned garbage pail.
My wife, who's a commercila property manager, holds that many of the
worst architectural excesses were designed as monuments to the architect
rather that to fulfil the operational needs of the occupier.

Come to think, I can remember at least one shitty piece of software that
was designed on the same principles, but thankfully it's now over seven
years since I worked in *that* environment.

regards
Steve
 

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