Mike Meyer wrote: > > Jive Dadson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Python does it right. C is allowed to do it anyway it likes, which was > > a stupifyingly horrible decision, IMHO. > > C only does it wrong if you think that C is a high level language.
I didn't say it does it wrong. I said it does it anyway it likes -- maybe right, maybe wrong. There *is* a right way, IMHO. Python does it that way. > [C] isn't - it's a portable assembler. I've heard that many times, but it makes no sense to me. By definition, the syntax of an assembly language closely resembles the format of individual hardware instructions for a particular processor. An assembler assembles individual hardware instructions. Back in the day, Unix (written largely in C) and Steve Johnson's pcc (the *portable* C compiler) together constituted a big leap forward. Implementing Unix on new processors was infinitely easier than porting OS's written in assembly language. So I disagree on two counts: C code is not entirely portable, (for example, division and mod may not work the same on two different machines), and a C compiler is most certainly not an assembler. > Now, I'll agree with you if you want to argue that some machines do > negative integer division in stupifyingly horrible ways. That's why I think it was a stupifyingly horrible decision. Understandable, but in the end an s.h.d. nonetheless. It would have been okay to define / and % correctly, in the mathematical sense, but also provide functions quick_div() and quick_mod() that were guaranteed to work correctly only when both arguments were positive. The way they did it is just too error prone, akin to early optimization. It's bitten me before, when I was called on to port code (which I did not write) from one machine to another. Having standard operators with under-defined behavior is just inviting trouble: long debugging sessions, or worse, unexplained failures in the field. Of course you and I would avoid all the pitfalls at the start. :-) ... and now back to your regularly scheduled Python newsgroup. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
