On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 1:04 PM, castironpi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Sep 5, 3:28 am, "Manu Hack" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 4:25 PM, castironpi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> > On Sep 4, 2:42 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> >> David C. Ullrich: >> >> >> > At least in mathematics, the sum of the elements of >> >> > the empty set _is_ 0, while the maximum element of the >> >> > empty set is undefined. >> >> >> What do you think about my idea of adding that 'default' argument to >> >> the max()/min() functions? >> >> >> Bye, >> >> bearophile >> >> > For max and min, why can't you just add your argument to the set >> > itself? >> >> > The reason max([]) is undefined is that max( S ) is in S. >> >> It makes sense. >> >> >The reason sum([]) is 0 is that sum( [ x ] ) - x = 0. >> >> It doesn't make sense to me. What do you set x to? > > For all x.
But then how can you conclude sum([]) = 0 from there? It's way far from obvious. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
